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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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http://www.archive.org/details/wandererinflorenOOIuca 



A WANDERER IN FLORENCE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Anne's Terrible Good Nature 
A Swan and Her Friends 
A Wanderer in Holland 
A Wanderer in London 
A Wanderer in Paris 
Character and Comedy 
Fireside and Sunshine 
Good Company 
Her Infinite Variety 
Highways and Byways in Sussex 
Listener's Lure 
Mr. Ingleside 
London Lavender 
Over Bemerton's 
One Day and Another 
The Friendly Town 
The Gentlest Art 
The Hambledon Men 
The Life of Charles Lamb 
The Open Road 
The Second Post 
The Slowcoach 
Sir Pulteney 
A Little of Everything 
Old Lamps for New 
and 
The Pocket Edition of the Works o* 
Charles Lamb 




THE DUOMO AND COMPANILE FROM THE VIA PECORI 



A WANDERER IN 
FLORENCE 



BY 

E^Vf'LUCAS 

AUTHOR OF "A WANDERER IN LONDON," 
"OVER BEMERTON'S," ETC., ETC. 



•WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY 

HARRY MORLEY 

AND THIRTY-EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS FROM PAINTINGS 
AND SCULPTURE 



2to gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1912 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1912, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1912. 



CU328164 






PREFACE 

A SENTENCE from a "Synthetical Guide- 
book " which is circulated in the Florentine 
hotels will express what I want to say, at the 
threshold of this volume, much better than could any 
unaided words of mine. It runs thus : " The nat- 
ural kindness, the high spirit, of the Florentine 
people, the wonderful masterpieces of art created 
by her great men, who in every age have stood in 
the front of art and science, rivalize with the gentle 
smile of her splendid sky to render Florence one of 
the finest towns of beautiful Italy." These words, 
written, I feel sure, by a Florentine, and therefore 
"inspirated" (as he says elsewhere) by a patriotic 
feeling, are true, and it is my hope that the pages 
that follow will at once fortify their truth and lead 
others to test it. 

Like the synthetical author, I too have not thought 
it necessary to provide " too many informations 
concerning art and history," but there will be found 
a few, practically unavoidable, in the gathering to- 
gether of which I have been indebted to many 



vi PREFACE 

authors : notably Vasari, Symonds, Crowe and Cav- 

alcaselle, Ruskin, Pater, and Baedeker. Among 

more recent books I would mention Herr Bode's 

"Florentine Sculptors of the Renaissance," Mr. F. 

M. Hyett's "Florence," Mr. E. L. S. Horsburgh's 

" Lorenzo the Magnificent " and " Savonarola," 

Mr. Gerald S. Davies' " Michelangelo," Mr. W. G. 

Waters' "Italian Sculptors," and Col. Young's 

"The Medici." 

I have to thank very heartily a good English 

Florentine for the construction of the historical 

chart at the end of the volume. 

E. V. L. 

May, 1912 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN COLOUR 
The Duomo and Campanile, from the Via Pecori Frontispiece ^ 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Cloisters of San Lorenzo, showino the windows 

of the blblioteca laurenziana 28 

The Via Calzaioli, from the Baptistery, showino the 

BlGALLO AND THE TOP OF Or SaN MlCHELE . .60 

The Palazzo Vecchio 90 y 

The Loggia of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Via de' 

Leoni 118 v 

The Loggia de' Lanzi, the Duomo, and the Palazzo 

Vecchio, from the Portico of the Uffizi . . 134 ^ 
flesole, from the hill under the monastery . . 158 <• 
The Badia and the Bargello, from the Piazza 

S. Firenze 180 L 

Interior of S. Croce 208 v 

The Ponte S. Trinita 222 v 

The Ponte Vecchio and back of the Via de' Bardi 246" 
S. Maria Novella and the corner of the Loggia di 

S. Paolo 268 

The Via de' Vagellai, from the Piazza S. Jacopo 

Trafossi 290 

The Piazza della Signoria on a Wet Friday After- 
noon 320 

View of Florence at Evening, from the Piazzale 

Michelangelo 346 ' 

Evening at the Piazzale Michelangelo, looking West 366 ^ 

xi 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN MONOTONE 

FACING 
PAGE 

A Cantoria. By Donatello, in the Museum of the Ca- 
thedral 6 

Cain and Abel. j By Ghiberti, from his second Bap- 

Abraham and Isaac, j tistery Doors . . . 16 * 

The Procession of the Magt. By Benozzo Gozzoli, in 

the Palazzo Riccardi 38 

Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. By 

Michelangelo, in the New Sacristy of S. Lorenzo . 50 . 

Christ and S. Thomas. By Verrocchio, in a niche by 
Donatello and Miehelozzo in the wall of Or San 
Michele 72" 

Putto with Dolphin. By Verrocchio, in the Palazzo 

Vecchio 80 * 

Madonna Adoring. Ascribed to Filippino Lippi, in the 

Uffizi 86 

The Adoration of the Magi. By Leonardo da Vinci, 

in the Uffizi . . . . * 100 - 

Madonna and Child. By Luca Signorelli, in the Uffizi . 110 ; 

t The Birth of Venus. By Botticelli, in the Uffizi . . 122 v 

The Annunciation. By Botticelli, in the Uffizi . . 130 ' 

San Giacomo. By Andrea del Sarto, in the Uffizi . . 138 \/ 

The Madonna del Cardellino. By Raphael, in the 

Uffizi 146 

The Madonna del Pozzo. By Franciabigio, in the Uffizi 154 
Monument to Count Ugo. By Mino da Fiesole, in the 

Badia 164 < 

xiii 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

n f By Donatello, in the Bargello . . . .172 

{ By Verrocchio, in the Bargello . . . . 172/ 

St. George. By Donatello, in the Bargello . . . 176 r 

Madonna and Child. By Verrocchio, in the Bargello . 186 » 
Madonna and Child. By Luca della Robbia, in the 

Bargello 192 / 

Bust of a Boy. By Luca or Andrea della Robbia, in the 

Bargello 200 v 

* Monument to Carlo Marzuppini. By Desiderio da 

Settignano, in S. Croce . 212 l 

David. By Michelangelo, in the Accademia . . . 218 \ 

The Flight into Egypt. By Fra Angelico, in the Ac- 
cademia 228 ' 

The Adoration of the Shepherds. By Ghirlandaio, in 

the Accademia 236 

The Vision of S. Bernard. By Fra Bartolommeo, in 

the Accademia 256 

Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Saints. By Botti- 
celli, in the Accademia . 264' 

Primavera. By Botticelli, in the Accademia . . . 272 l 

The Coronation of the Virgin. By Fra Angelico, in 

the Convent of S. Marco 280 v 

The Annunciation. By Luca della Robbia, in the Spe- 

dale degli Innocenti 298 ' 

The Birth of the Virgin. By Ghirlandaio, in S. Maria 

Novella 306* 

The Madonna del Granduca. By Raphael, in the Pitti 314 i 

The Madonna della Sedia. By Raphael, in the Pitti . 328 i 

The Concert. By Giorgione, in the Pitti .... 334 ' 

Madonna Adoring. By Botticini, in the Pitti . . . 340 * 

The Madonna and Children. By Perugino, in the Pitti 352 ; 

* A Gipsy. By Boccaccio Boecaccini, in the Pitti . . 360 , 

All the illustrations are from photographs by G. Brogi, except those marked *, 
which are by Fratelli Alinari, and that marked f, which is by R. Anderson. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Duomo I: Its Construction 1 

CHAPTER II 
The Duomo II : Its Associations 13 

CHAPTER III 
The Duomo III : A Ceremony and a Museum . . 27 

CHAPTER IV 
The Campanile and Baptistery 36 

CHAPTER V 
The Riccardi Palace and the Medici .... 50 

CHAPTER VI 
San Lorenzo and Michelangelo 71 

CHAPTER VII 

Or San Michele and the Palazzo Vecchio 90 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Uffizi I : History 109 

CHAPTER IX 

The Uffizi II: The First Six Rooms . . . .117 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

The Uffizi III : Botticelli 132 

CHAPTER XI 
The Uffizi IV : The Remaining Rooms .... 145 

CHAPTER XII 
"Aerial Fiesole" 163 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Badia and Dante 170 

CHAPTER XIV 
The Bargello 183 

CHAPTER XV 
S. Croce ..207 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Accademia 224 

CHAPTER XVII 
Two Monasteries and a Procession .... 242 

CHAPTER XVIII 
S. Marco and Savonarola 254 

CHAPTER XIX 

SS. Annunziata, the Spedale and the Etruscans . 275 

CHAPTER XX 
The Cascine and the Arno 286 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XXI 

PAGE 

S. Maria Novella 297 

CHAPTER XXII 
The Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele and S. TrinitA . . 312 

CHAPTER XXIII 
The Pitti 326 

CHAPTER XXIV 
English Poets at Florence 344 

CHAPTER XXV 
The Carmine and S. Miniato 355 

Historical Chart of Florence, 1296-1564 . . . 368 
Index. 



A WANDERER IN FLORENCE 



A WANDERER IN FLORENCE 



CHAPTER I 

THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

The City of the Miracle — The Marble Companions — Twilight and 
Immensity — Arnolfo di Cambio — Dante's seat — Ruskin's "Shepherd" 
— Giotto the various — Giotto's fun — The indomitable Brunelleschi — 
Makers of Florence — The present fagade. 

ALL visitors to Florence make first for the Duomo. 
Let us do the same. 
The real name of the Duomo is the Cathedral of S. 
Maria del Fiore, or St. Mary of the Flowers, the flower 
being the Florentine lily. Florence herself is called the City 
of Flowers, and that, in the spring and summer, is a happy 
enough description. But in the winter it fails. A name 
appropriate to all the seasons would be the City of the 
Miracle, the miracle being the Renaissance. For though 
all over Italy traces of the miracle are apparent, Florence 
was its very home and still can point to the greatest 
number of its achievements. Giotto (at the beginning of 
this quickening movement) may at Assisi have been more 
inspired as a painter ; but here is his campanile and here 
are his S. Maria Novella and S. Croce frescoes. Fra An- 
gelico and Donatello (in the midst of it) were never more 

B 1 



2 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

inspired than here, where they worked and died. Michel- 
angelo (at the end of it) may be more surprising in the 
Vatican ; but here are his wonderful Medici tombs. How 
it came about that between the years 1300 and 1500 Italian 
soil — and chiefly Tuscan soil — threw up such masters, 
not only with the will and spirit to do what they did but 
with the power too, no one will ever be able to explain. But 
there it is. In the history of the world two centuries were 
suddenly given mysteriously to the activities of Italian 
men of humane genius and as suddenly the Divine gift was 
withdrawn. And to see the very flower of these two 
centuries it is to Florence we must go. 

It is best to enter the Piazza del Duomo from the Via de' 
Martelli, the Via de' Cerretani, the Via Calzaioli, or the 
Via Pecori, because then one comes instantly upon the 
campanile too. The upper windows — so very lovely — 
may have been visible at the end of the streets, with 
Brunelleschi's warm dome high in the sky beside them, but 
that was not to diminish the effect of the first sight of the 
whole. Duomo and campanile make as fair a couple as 
ever builders brought together : the immense comfortable 
church so solidly set upon the earth, and at its side this 
delicate, slender marble creature, all gaiety and lightness, 
which as surely springs from roots within the earth. For 
one cannot be long in Florence, looking at this tower every 
day and many times a day, both from near and far, with- 
out being perfectly certain that it grows — and from a bulb, 
I think — and was never really built at all, whatever the 
records may aver. 

The interior of the Duomo is so unexpected that one 
has the feeling of having entered, by some extraordinary 
chance, the wrong building. Outside it was so garish with 
its coloured marbles, under the southern sky ; outside, too, 



IMMENSITY AND GLOOM 3 

one's ears were filled with all the shattering noises in which 
Florence is an adept ; and then, one step, and behold 
nothing but vast and silent gloom. This surprise is the 
more emphatic if one happens already to have been in the 
Baptistery. For the Baptistery is also coloured marble 
without, yet within it is coloured marble and mosaic too : 
there is no disparity ; whereas in the Duomo the walls 
have a Northern grey and the columns are brown. Aus- 
terity and immensity join forces. 

When all is said the chief merit of the Duomo is this 
immensity. Such works of art as it has are not very notice- 
able, or at any rate do not insist upon being seen ; but in 
its vastness it overpowers. Great as are some of the 
churches of Florence, I suppose three or four of them could 
be packed within this one. And mere size with a dim 
light and a savour of incense is enough : it carries religion. 
No need for masses and chants or any ceremony whatever : 
the world is shut out, one is on terms with the infinite. 
A forest exercises the same spell ; among mountains one 
feels it; but in such a cathedral as the Duomo one 
feels it perhaps most of all, for it is the work of man, yet 
touched with mystery and wonder, and the knowledge 
that man is the author of such a marvel adds to its 
greatness. 

The interior is so dim and strange as to be for a time 
sheer terra incognita, and to see a bat flitting from side 
to side, as I have often done even in the morning, is to 
receive no shock. In such a twilight land there must 
naturally be bats, one thinks. The darkness is due not to 
lack of windows, but to time. The windows are there, but 
they have become opaque. None of the coloured ones in 
the aisle allows more than a filtration of light through it ; 
there are only the plain, circular ones high up and those 



4 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

rich, coloured, circular ones under the dome to do the work. 
In a little while, however, one's eyes not only become accus- 
tomed to the twilight but are very grateful for it; and 
beginning to look inquiringly about, as they ever do in 
this city of beauty, they observe, just inside, an instant 
reminder of the antiseptic qualities of Italy. For by the 
first great pillar stands a receptacle for holy water, with a 
pretty and charming angelic figure upon it, which from its 
air of newness you would think was a recent gift to the 
cathedral by a grateful Florentine. It is six hundred years 
old and perhaps was designed by Giotto himself. 

The emptiness of the Duomo is another of its charms. 
Nothing is allowed to impair the vista as you stand by the 
western entrance : the floor has no chairs ; the great 
columns rise from it in the gloom as if they, too, were 
rooted. The walls, too, are bare, save for a few tablets. 

The history of the building is briefly this. The first 
cathedral of Florence was the Baptistery, and S. John the 
Baptist is still the patron saint of the city. Then in 1182 
the cathedral was transferred to S. Reparata, which 
stood on part of the site of the Duomo, and in 1294 the 
decision to rebuild S. Reparata magnificently was arrived 
at, and Arnolfo di Cambio was instructed to draw up plans. 
Arnolf o, whom we see not only on a tablet in the left aisle, 
in relief, with his plan, but also more than life size, seated 
beside Brunelleschi on the Palazzo de' Canonici on the 
south side of the cathedral, facing the door, was then sixty- 
two and an architect of great reputation. Born in 1232, 
he had studied under Niccolo Pisano, the sculptor of the 
famous pulpit at Pisa (now in the museum there), of that 
in the cathedral in Siena, and of the fountain at Perugia (in 
all of which Arnolfo probably helped), and the designer of 
many buildings all over Italy. Arnolfo's own unaided 



THE SASSO DI DANTE 5 

sculpture may be seen at its best in the ciborium in 
S. Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome; but it is chiefly as an 
architect that he is now known. He had already given 
Florence her extended walls and some of her most beautiful 
buildings — the Or San Michele and the Badia — and simul- 
taneously he designed S. Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio. 
Vasari has it that Arnolfo was assisted on the Duomo by 
Cimabue ; but that is doubtful. 

The foundations were consecrated in 1296 and the first 
stone laid on September 8th, 1298, and no one was more 
interested in its early progress than a young, grave lawyer 
who used to sit on a stone seat on the south side and watch 
the builders, little thinking how soon he was to be driven 
from Florence for ever. This seat — the Sasso di Dante — 
was still to be seen when Wordsworth visited Florence in 
1837, for he wrote a sonnet in which he tells us that he in 
reverence sate there too, "and, for a moment, filled that 
empty Throne." But one can do so no longer, for the 
place which it occupied has been built over and only 
a slab in the wall with an inscription (on the house next 
the Palazzo de' Canonici) marks the site. 

Arnolfo died in 1310, and thereupon there seems to have 
been a cessation or slackening of work, due no doubt to 
the disturbed state of the city, which was in the throes 
of costly wars and embroilments. Not until 1332 is there 
definite news of its progress, by which time the work had 
passed into the control of the Arte della Lana; but in 
that year, although Florentine affairs were by no means 
as flourishing as they should be, and a flood in the Arno 
had just destroyed three or four of the bridges, a new 
architect was appointed, in the person of the most various 
and creative man in the history of the Renaissance — none 
other than Giotto himself, who had already received the 



6 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

commission to design the campanile which should stand at 
the cathedral's side. 

Giotto was the son of a small farmer at Vespignano, near 
Florence. He was instructed in art by Cimabue, who dis- 
covered him drawing a lamb on a stone while herding 
sheep, and took him as his pupil. Cimabue, of whom more 
is said, together with more of Giotto as a painter, in the 
chapter on the Accademia, had died in 1302, leaving 
Giotto far beyond all living artists, and Giotto, between 
the age of fifty and sixty, was now residing in Cimabue's 
house. He had already painted frescoes in the Bargello (in- 
troducing his friend Dante), in S. Maria Novella, S. Croce, 
and elsewhere in Italy, particularly in the upper and lower 
churches at Assisi, and at the Madonna dell' Arena chapel 
at Padua when Dante was staying there during his exile. 
In those days no man was painter only or architect only ; 
an all-round knowledge of both arts and crafts was desired 
by every ambitious youth who was attracted by the wish 
to make beautiful things, and Giotto was a unversal 
master. It was not then surprising that on his settling 
finally in Florence he should be invited to design a cam- 
panile to stand for ever beside the cathedral, or that he 
should be appointed superintendent of the cathedral works. 

Giotto did not live to see even his tower completed — it 
is the unhappy destiny of architects to die too soon — but 
he was able during the four years left him to find time for 
certain accessory decorations, of which more will be said 
later, and also to paint for S. Trinita the picture which 
we shall see in the Accademia, together with a few other 
works, since perished, for the Badia and S. Giorgio. He 
died in 1336 and was buried in the cathedral, as the tablet, 
with Benedetto da Maiano's bust of him, tells. He is also 
to be seen full length, in stone, in a niche at the Uffizi ; 




> 5 

pq « 

S3 

< 5 



GIOTTO THE HUMORIST 7 

but the figure is misleading, for if Vasari is to be trusted 
(and for my part I find it amusing to trust him as much 
as possible) the master was insignificant in size. 

Giotto has suffered, I think, in reputation, from Ruskin, 
who took him peculiarly under his wing, persistently 
called him "the Shepherd," and made him appear as some- 
thing between a Sunday-school superintendent and the 
Creator. The "Mornings in Florence" and "Giotto and 
his Works in Padua" so insist upon the artist's holiness and 
conscious purpose in all he did that his genial worldliness, 
shrewdness, and humour, as brought out by Dante, Vasari, 
Sacchetti, and Boccaccio, are utterly excluded. What we 
see is an intense saint where really was a very robust man. 
Sacchetti 's story of Giotto one day stumbling over a pig 
that ran between his legs and remarking, "And serve me 
right ; for I've made thousands with the help of pigs' 
bristles and never once given them even a cup of broth," 
helps to adjust the balance, while to his friend Dante he 
made a reply, so witty that the poet could not forget his 
admiration, in answer to his question how was it that 
Giotto's pictures were so beautiful and his six children so 
ugly ; but I must leave the reader to hunt it for himself, 
as these are modest pages. Better still, for its dry humour, 
was his answer to King Robert of Naples, who had com- 
manded him to that city to paint some Scriptural scenes, 
and, visiting the artist while he worked, on a very hot 
day, remarked, "Giotto, if I were you I should leave off 
painting for a while." "Yes," replied Giotto, "if I were 
you I should." 

To Giotto happily we come again and again in this book. 
Enough at present to say that upon his death in 1336 he 
was buried, like Arnolfo, in the cathedral, where the tablet 
to his memory may be studied, and was succeeded as archi- 



8 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

tect, both of the church and the tower, by his friend and 
assistant, Andrea Pisano, whose chief title to fame is his 
Baptistery doors and the carving, which we are soon to ex- 
amine, of the scenes round the base of the campanile. He, 
too, died — in 1348 — before the tower was finished. 

Francesco Talenti was next called in, again to superintend 
both buildings, and not only to superintend but to extend 
the plans of the cathedral. Arnolfo and Giotto had both 
worked upon a smaller scale ; Talenti determined the pres- 
ent floor dimensions. The revised facade was the work of 
a committee of artists, among them Giotto's godson and 
disciple, Taddeo Gaddi, then busy with the Ponte Vecchio, 
and Andrea Orcagna, whose tabernacle we shall see at Or 
San Michele. And so the work went on until the main 
structure was complete in the thirteen-seventies. 

Another longish interval then came, in which nothing 
of note in the construction occurred, and the next interest- 
ing date is 1418, when a competition for the design for the 
dome was announced, the work to be given eventually to 
one Filippo Brunelleschi, then an ambitious and nervously 
determined man, well known in Florence as an architect, 
of forty-one. Brunelleschi, who, again according to Vasari, 
was small, and therefore as different as may be from the 
figure which is seated on the clergy house opposite the south 
door of the cathedral, watching his handiwork, was born in 
1377, the son of a well-to-do Florentine of good family who 
wished to make him a notary. The boy, however, wanted 
to be an artist, and was therefore placed with a goldsmith, 
which was in those days the natural course. As a youth 
he attempted everything, being of a pertinacious and in- 
quiring mind, and he was also a great debater and student 
of Dante; and, taking to sculpture, he was one of those 
who, as we shall see in a later chapter, competed for the 



FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI 9 

commission for the Baptistery gates. It was indeed his 
failure in that competition which decided him to con- 
centrate on architecture. That he was a fine sculptor his 
competitive design, now preserved in the Bargello, and his 
Christ crucified in S. Maria Novella, prove ; but in leading 
him to architecture the stars undoubtedly did rightly. 

It was in 1403 that the decision giving Ghiberti the 
Baptistery commission was made, when Brunelleschi was 
twenty-six and Donatello, destined to be his life-long friend, 
was seventeen; and when Brunelleschi decided to go to 
Rome for the study of his new branch of industry, archi- 
tecture, Donatello went too. There they worked together, 
copying and measuring everything of beauty, Brunelleschi 
having always before his mind the problem of how to place 
a dome upon the cathedral of his native city. But, having 
a shrewd knowledge of human nature and immense patience, 
he did not hasten to urge upon the authorities his claims as 
the heaven-born architect, but contented himself with 
smaller works and even assisted his rival Ghiberti with 
his gates, joining at that task Donatello and Luca della 
Robbia, and giving lessons in perspective to a youth who 
was to do more than any man after Giotto to assure the 
great days of painting and become the exemplar of the 
finest masters — Masaccio. 

It was not until 1419 that Brunelleschi's persistence and 
belief in his own powers satisfied the controllers of the 
cathedral works that he might perhaps be as good as his 
word and was the right man to build the dome ; but at last 
he was able to begin. 1 For the story of his difficulties, 
told minutely and probably with sufficient accuracy, one 

1 One of Brunelleschi's devices to bring before the authorities an idea 
of the dome he projected, was of standing an egg on end, as Columbus is 
famed for doing, fully twenty years before Columbus was born. 



10 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

must go to Vasari : it is well worth reading, and is a lurid 
commentary on the suspicions and jealousies of the world. 
The building of the dome, without scaffolding, occupied 
fourteen years, Brunelleschi's device embracing two domes, 
one within the other, tied together with stone for material 
support and strength. It is because of this inner dome 
that the impression of its size, from within the cathedral, 
can disappoint. Meanwhile, in spite of all the wear and 
tear of the work, the satisfying of incredulous busybodies, 
and the removal of such an incubus as Ghiberti, who be- 
cause he was a superb modeller of bronze reliefs was made 
for a while joint architect with a salary that Brunelleschi 
felt should either be his own or no one's, the little man found 
time also to build beautiful churches and cloisters all over 
Florence. He lived to see his dome finished and the 
cathedral consecrated by Pope Eugenius IV in 1436, dying 
ten years later. He was buried in the cathedral, and his 
adopted son and pupil, Buggiano, made the head of him on 
the tablet to his memory. 

Brunelleschi's lantern, the model of which from his own 
hand we shall see in the museum of the cathedral, was not 
placed on the dome until 1462. The copper ball above it 
was the work of Verrocchio. In 1912 there are still want- 
ing many yards of stone border to the dome. 

Of the man himself we know little, except that he was 
of iron tenacity and lived for his work. Vasari calls him 
witty, but gives a not good example of his wit ; he seems 
to have been philanthropic and a patron of poor artists, 
and he grieved deeply at the untimely death of Masaccio, 
who painted him in one of the Carmine frescoes, together 
with Donatello and other Florentines. 

As one walks about Florence, visiting this church and 
that, and peering into cool cloisters, one's mind is always 



MAKERS OF FLORENCE 11 

intent upon the sculpture or paintings that may be pre- 
served there for the delectation of the eye. The tendency 
is to think little of the architect who made the buildings 
where they are treasured. Asked to name the greatest 
makers of this beautiful Florence, the ordinary visitor would 
say Michelangelo, Giotto, Raphael, Donatello, the della Rob- 
bias, Ghirlandaio, and Andrea del Sarto : all before Brunel- 
leschi, even if he named him at all. But this is wrong. 
Not even Michelangelo did so much for Florence as he. 
Michelangelo was no doubt the greatest individualist in the 
whole history of art, and everything that he did grips the 
memory in a vice; but Florence without Michelangelo 
would still be very nearly Florence, whereas Florence with- 
out Brunelleschi is unthinkable. No dome to the cathe- 
dral, first of all ; no S. Lorenzo church or cloisters ; no S. 
Croce cloisters or Pazzi chapel; no Badia of Fiesole. 
Honour where honour is due. We should be singing the 
praises of Filippo Brunelleschi in every quarter of the city. 

After Brunelleschi the chief architect of the cathedral 
was Giuliano da Maiano, the artist of the beautiful in- 
tarsia woodwork in the sacristy, and the uncle of Benedetto 
da Maiano who made the S. Croce pulpit. 

The present fagade is the work of the architect Emilio 
de Fabris, whose tablet is to be seen on the left wall. It 
was finished in 1887, five hundred and more years after 
the abandonment of Arnolfo's original design and three 
hundred and more years after the destruction of the second 
one, begun in 1357 and demolished in 1587. Of Arnolfo's 
facade the primitive seated statue of Boniface VIII (or John 
XXII) just inside the cathedral is, with a bishop in one of 
the sacristies, the only remnant ; while of the second fagade, 
for which Donatello and other early Renaissance sculptors 
worked, the giant S. John the Evangelist, in the left aisle, 



12 THE DUOMO I : ITS CONSTRUCTION 

is perhaps the most important relic. Other statues in the 
cathedral were also there, while the central figure — the 
Madonna with enamel eyes — may be seen in the cathedral 
museum. Although not great, the group of the Madonna 
and Child now over the central door of the Duomo has 
much charm and benignancy. 

The present f acade, although attractive as a mass of light, 
is not really good. Its patterns are trivial, its paintings 
and statues commonplace ; and I personally have the feel- 
ing that it would have been more fitting had Giotto's 
marble been supplied rather with a contrast than an imita- 
tion. As it is, it is not till Giotto's tower soars above the 
facade that one can rightly (from the front) appreciate its 
roseate delicacy, so strong is this rival. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

Dante's picture — Sir John Hawkwood — Ancestor and Descendant — 
The Pazzi Conspiracy — Squeamish Montesecco — Giuliano de' Medici dies 
— Lorenzo's escape — Vengeance on the Pazzi — Botticelli's cartoon — 
High Mass — Luca della Robbia — Michelangelo nearing the end — The 
Miracles of Zenobius — East and West meet in splendour — Marsilio 
Ficino and the New Learning — Beautiful glass. 

OF the four men most concerned in the, structure of the 
Duomo I have already spoken. There are other men 
held in memory there, and certain paintings and statues, of 
which I wish to speak now. 

The picture of Dante in the left aisle was painted by 
command of the Republic in 1465, one hundred and sixty- 
three years after his banishment from the city. Lectures 
on Dante were frequently delivered in the churches of Flor- 
ence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it 
was interesting for those attending them to have a portrait 
on the wall. This picture was painted by Domenico di 
Michelino, the portrait of Dante being prepared for him by 
Alessio Baldovinetti, who probably took it from Giotto's 
fresco in the chapel of the Podesta at the Bargello. In this 
picture Dante stands between the Inferno and a concen- 
trated Florence in which portions of the Duomo, the 
Signoria, the Badia, the Bargello, and Or San Michele are 

visible. Behind him is Paradise. In his hand is the " Divine 

13 



14 THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

Comedy." I say no more of the poet here, because a large 
part of the chapter on the Badia is given to him. 

Near the Dante picture in the left aisle are two Dona- 
tellos — the massive S. John the Evangelist, seated, who 
might have given ideas to Michelangelo for his Moses a 
century and more later ; and, nearer the door, between the 
tablets to De Fabris and Squarciaparello, the so-called Pog- 
gio Bracciolini, a witty Italian statesman and Humanist 
and friend of the Medici, who, however, since he was much 
younger than this figure at the time of its exhibition, and 
is not known to have visited Florence till later, probably 
did not sit for it. But it is a powerful and very natural 
work, although its author never intended it to stand on 
any floor, even of so dim a cathedral as this. The S. John, 
I may say, was brought from the old fagade — not Arnolfo's, 
but the committee's fagade — where it had a niche about 
ten feet from the ground. The Poggio was also on this 
fagade, but higher. It was Poggio's son, Jacopo, who 
took part in the Pazzi Conspiracy, of which we are about 
to read, and was very properly hanged for it. 

Of the two pictures on the entrance wall, so high as to 
be imperfectly seen, that on the right as you face it has 
peculiar interest to English visitors, for (painted by Paolo 
Uccello, whose great battle piece enriches our National 
Gallery) it represents Sir John Hawkwood, an English 
free lance and head of the famous White Company, who, 
after some successful raids on Papal territory in Provence, 
put his sword, his military genius, and his bravoes at the 
service of the highest bidder among the warlike cities and 
provinces of Italy, and, eventually passing wholly into the 
employment of Florence (after harrying her for other pay- 
masters for some years), delivered her very signally from 
her enemies in 1392. Hawkwood was an Essex man, the 



A FIRE-EATER 15 

son of a tanner at Hinckford, and was born there early in 
the fourteenth century. He seems to have reached France 
as an archer under Edward III, and to have remained a free 
booter, passing on to Italy, about 1362, to engage joyously 
in as much fighting as any English commander can ever 
have had, for some thirty years, with very good pay for it. 
Although, by all accounts, a very Salomon Brazenhead, 
Hawkwood had enough dignity to be appointed English 
Ambassador to Rome, and later to Florence, which he made 
his home, and where he died in 1394. He was buried in the 
Duomo, on the north side of the choir, and was to have re- 
posed beneath a sumptuous monument made under his own 
instructions, with frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi and Giuliano 
d' Arrigo ; but something intervened, and Uccello's fresco 
was used instead, and this, some sixty years ago, was trans- 
ferred to canvas and moved to the position in which it now 
is seen. 

Hawkwood's life, briskly told by a full-blooded hand, 
would make a fine book. One pleasant story at least is 
related of him, that on being beset by some begging friars 
who prefaced their mendicancy with the words, "God give 
you peace," he answered, "God take away your alms"; 
and, on their protesting, reminded them that such peace 
was the last thing he required, since should their pious wish 
come true he would die of hunger. One of the daughters 
of this fire-eater married John Shelley, and thus became 
an ancestress of Shelley the poet, who, as it chances, also 
found a home for a while in this city, almost within hailing 
distance of his ancestor's tomb and portrait, and here wrote 
not only his "Ode to the West Wind," but his caustic 
satire, "Peter Bell the Third." 

Hawkwood's name is steeped sufficiently in carnage ; but 
we get to the scene of bloodshed in reality as we approach 



16 THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

the choir, for it was here that Giuliano de' Medici was as- 
sassinated, as he attended High Mass, on April 26th, 1478, 
with the connivance, if not actually at the instigation, of 
Christ's Vicar himself, Pope Sixtus IV. Florentine history 
is so eventful and so tortuous that beyond the bare outline 
given in chapter V, I shall make in these pages but little 
effort to follow it, assuming a certain amount of knowledge 
on the part of the reader; but it must be stated here 
that periodical revolts against the power and prestige of 
the Medici often occurred, and none was more desperate 
than that of the Pazzi family in 1478, acting with the 
support of the Pope behind all and with the co-operation 
of Girolamo Biario, nephew of the Pope, and Salviati, 
Archbishop of Pisa. The Pazzi, who were not only 
opposed to the temporal power of the Medici, but were 
their rivals in business — both families being bankers — 
wished to rid Florence of Lorenzo and Giuliano in order 
to be greater both civically and financially. Girolamo 
wished the removal of Lorenzo and Giuliano in order that 
hostility to his plans for adding Forli and Faenza to the 
territory of Imola, which the Pope had successfully won 
for him against Lorenzo's opposition, might disappear. 
The Pope had various political reasons for wishing Lo- 
renzo's and Giuliano's death and bringing Florence, always 
headstrong and dangerous, to heel. While as for Salviati, 
it was sufficient that he was Archbishop of Pisa, Florence's 
ancient rival and foe; but he was a grasping bad man 
anyway. Assassination also was in the air, for Galeazzo 
Maria Sforza of Milan had been stabbed in church in 1476, 
thus to some extent paving the way for this murder, since 
Lorenzo and Sforza, when acting together, had been prac- 
tically unassailable. 

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THE PAZZI CONSPIRACY 17 

Lorenzo had been at the head of Florentine affairs for nine 
years and he was steadily growing in strength and popu- 
larity. Hence it was now or never. 

The conspirators' first idea was to kill the brothers at a 
banquet which Lorenzo was to give to the great-nephew 
of the Pope, the youthful Cardinal Raffaello Riario, who 
promised to be an amenable catspaw. Giuliano, however, 
having hurt his leg, was not well enough to be present, 
but as he would attend High Mass, the conspirators 
decided to act then. That is to say, it was then, in the 
cathedral, that the death of the Medici brothers was to be 
effected ; meanwhile another detachment of conspirators 
under Salviati was to rise simultaneously to capture the 
Signoria, while the armed men of the party who were out- 
side and inside the walls would begin their attacks on the 
populace. Thus, at the same moment Medici and city 
would fall. Such was the plan. 

The actual assassins were Francesco de' Pazzi and Ber- 
nardo Bandini, who were nominally friends of the Medici 
(Francesco's brother Guglielmo having married Bianca de' 
Medici, Lorenzo's sister), and two priests named Maffeo 
da Volterra and Stefano da Bagnone. A professional 
bravo named Montesecco was to have killed Lorenzo, but 
refused on learning that the scene of the murder was to be 
a church. At that, he said, he drew the line : murder 
anywhere else he could perform cheerfully, but in a sacred 
building it was too much to ask. He therefore did 
nothing, but, subsequently confessing, made the guilt of all 
his associates doubly certain. 

When High Mass began it was found that Giuliano was 
not present, and Francesco de' Pazzi and Bandini were sent 
to persuade him to come — a Judas-like errand indeed. On 
the way back, it is said, one of them affectionately placed 



18 THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

his arm round Giuliano — to see if he wore a shirt of mail 
— remarking, to cover the action, that he was getting fat. 
On his arrival, Giuliano took his place at the north side of 
the circular choir, near the door which leads to the Via de* 
Servi, while Lorenzo stood at the opposite side. At the 
given signal Bandini and Pazzi were to stab Giuliano and 
the two priests were to stab Lorenzo. The signal was the 
breaking of the Eucharistic wafer, and at this solemn 
moment Giuliano was instantly killed, with one stab in the 
heart and nineteen elsewhere, Francesco so overdoing his 
attack that he severely wounded himself too ; but Lorenzo 
was in time to see the beginning of the assault, and, making 
a movement to escape, he prevented the priest from doing 
aught but inflict a gash in his neck, and, springing away, 
dashed behind the altar to the old sacristy, where certain 
of his friends who followed him banged the heavy bronze 
doors on the pursuing foe. Those in the cathedral, mean- 
while, were in a state of hysterical alarm ; the youthful 
cardinal was hurried into the new sacristy; Guglielmo 
de' Pazzi bellowed forth his innocence in loud tones ; and 
his murderous brother and Bandini got off. 

Order being restored, Lorenzo was led by a strong body- 
guard to the Palazzo Medici, where he appeared at a 
window to convince the momentarily increasing crowd that 
he was still living. Meanwhile things were going not 
much more satisfactorily for the Pazzi at the Palazzo 
Vecchio, where, according to the plan, the gonfalonier, 
Cesare Petrucci, was to be either killed or secured. The 
Archbishop Salviati, who was to effect this, managed his 
interview so clumsily that Petrucci suspected something, 
those being suspicious times, and, instead of submitting to 
capture, himself turned the key on his visitors. The Pazzi 
faction in the city, meanwhile, hoping that all had gone 



VENGEANCE 19 

well in the Palazzo Vecchio, as well as in the cathedral (as 
they thought), were running through the streets calling 
"Viva la Liberta ! " to be met with counter cries of "Palle ! 
palle !" — the palle being the balls on the Medici escut- 
cheon, still to be seen all over Florence and its vicinity 
and on every curtain in the Uffizi. 

The truth gradually spreading, the city then rose for 
the Medici and justice began to be done. The Archbishop 
was hanged at once, just as he was, from a window of the 
Palazzo Vecchio. Francesco de' Pazzi, who had got home 
to bed, was dragged to the Palazzo and hanged too. The 
mob meanwhile were not idle, and most of the Pazzi were 
accounted for, together with many followers — although 
Lorenzo publicly implored them to be merciful. Poliziano, 
the scholar-poet and friend of Lorenzo, has left a vivid 
account of the day. With his own eyes he saw the hanging 
Salviati, in his last throes, bite the hanging Francesco de' 
Pazzi. Old Jacopo succeeded in escaping, but not for long, 
and a day or so later he too was hanged. Bandini got as 
far as Constantinople, but was brought back in chains and 
hanged. The two priests hid in the Benedictine abbey in 
the city and for a while evaded search, but being found they 
were torn to pieces by the crowd. Montesecco, having 
confessed, was beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello. 

The hanging of the chief conspirators was kept in the 
minds of the short-memoried Florentines by a representa- 
tion outside the Palazzo Vecchio by none other than the 
wistful, spiritual Botticelli ; while three effigies, life size, 
of Lorenzo — one of them with his bandaged neck — were 
made by Verrocchio in coloured wax and set up in places 
where prayers might be offered. Commemorative medals, 
which may be seen in the Bargello, were also struck, and 
the family of Pazzi was banished and its name removed 



20 THE DUOMO II: ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

by decree from the city's archives. Poor Giuliano, who 
was generally beloved for his charm and youthful spirits, 
was buried at S. Lorenzo in great state. 

I have often attended High Mass in this Duomo choir 
— the theatre of the Pazzi tragedy — but never without 
thinking of that scene. 

Luca della Robbia's doors to the new sacristy, which 
gave the young cardinal his safety, had been finished only 
eleven years. Donatello was to have designed them, but 
his work at Padua was too pressing. The commission was 
then given to Michelozzo, Donatello's partner, and to Luca 
della Robbia, but it seems likely that Luca did nearly all. 
The doors are in very high relief, thus differing abso- 
lutely from Donatello's at S. Lorenzo, which are in very low. 
Luca's work here is sweet and mild rather than strong, and 
the panels derive their principal charm from the angels, 
who, in pairs, attend the saints. Above the door was 
placed, at the time of Lorenzo's escape, the beautiful can- 
toria, also by Luca, which is now in the museum of the 
cathedral, while above the door of the old sacristy was 
Donatello's cantoria. Commonplace new ones now take 
their place. In the semicircle over each door is a coloured 
relief by Luca : that over the bronze doors being the 
"Resurrection," and the other the "Ascension" ; and they 
are interesting not only for their beauty but as being 
the earliest-known examples in Luca's newly-discovered 
glazed terra-cotta medium, which was to do so much in the 
hands of himself, his nephew Andrea, and his followers, to 
make Florence still lovelier and the legend of the Virgin 
Mary still sweeter. But of the della Robbias and their 
exquisite genius I shall say more later, when we come 
to the Bargello. 

As different as would be possible to imagine is the genius 



MICHELANGELO'S LAST WORK 21 

of that younger sculptor, the author of the Pieta at the back 
of the altar, near where we now stand, who, when Luca 
finished these bronze doors, in 1467, was not yet born — 
Michelangelo Buonarroti. This group, which is unfinished, 
is the last the old and weary Titan ever worked at, and 
it was meant to be part of his own tomb. Vasari, to whose 
"Lives of the Painters'' we shall be indebted, as this book 
proceeds, for so much good human nature, and who speaks 
of Michelangelo with peculiar authority, since he was his 
friend, pupil, and correspondent, tells us that once when he 
went to see the sculptor in Rome, near the end, he found 
him at work upon this Pieta, but the sculptor was so dis- 
satisfied with one portion that he let his lantern fall in 
order that Vasari might not see it, saying : "I am so old 
that death frequently drags at my mantle to take me, and 
one day my person will fall like this lantern." The Pieta 
is still in deep gloom, as the master would have liked, but 
enough is revealed to prove its pathos and its power. 

In the east end of the nave is the chapel of S. Zenobius, 
containing a bronze reliquary by Ghiberti, with scenes upon 
it from the life of this saint, so important in Florentine re- 
ligious history. It is, however, very hard to see, and 
should be illuminated. Zenobius was born at Florence in 
the reign of Constantine the Great, when Christianity was 
by no means the prevailing religion of the city, although the 
way had been paved by various martyrs. After studying 
philosophy and preaching with much acceptance, Zenobius 
was summoned to Rome by Pope Damasus. On the Pope's 
death he became Bishop of Florence, and did much, says 
Butler, to "extirpate the kingdom of Satan." The saint 
lived in the ancient tower which still stands — one of the few 
survivors of Florence's hundreds of towers — at the corner 
of the Via Por S. Maria (which leads from the Mercato 



n THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

Nuovo to the Ponte Vecchio) and the Via Lambertesca. It 
is called the Torre de' Girolami, and on S. Zenobius' day — 
May 25th — is decorated with flowers ; and since never are 
so many flowers in the city of flowers as at that time, it is a 
sight to see. The remains of the saint were moved to the 
Duomo, although it had not then its dome, from S. Lorenzo, 
in 1330, and the simple column in the centre of the road 
opposite Ghiberti's first Baptistery doors was erected to 
mark the event, since on that very spot, it is said, stood a 
dead elm tree which, when the bier of the saint chanced to 
touch it, immediately sprang to life again and burst into 
leaf; even, the enthusiastic chronicler adds, into flower. 
The result was that the tree was cut completely to pieces 
by relic hunters, but the column by the Baptistery, the 
work of Brunelleschi (erected on the site of an earlier one), 
fortunately remains as evidence of the miracle. Ghiberti, 
however, did not choose this miracle but another for repre- 
sentation ; for not only did Zenobius dead restore anima- 
tion, but while he was himself living he resuscitated two 
boys. The one was a ward of his own ; the second was an 
ordinary Florentine, for whom the same modest boon was 
craved by his sorrowing parents. It is one of these scenes 
of resuscitation which Ghiberti has designed in bronze, 
while Bidolfo Ghirlandaio painted it in a picture in the 
Uffizi. We shall see S. Zenobius again in the fresco by 
Ridolfo's father, the great Ghirlandaio, in the Palazzo 
Vecchio ; while the portrait on the first pillar of the left 
aisle as one enters the cathedral, is of Zenobius too. 

The date of the Pazzi Conspiracy was 1478. A few 
years later the same building witnessed the extraordinary 
effects of Savonarola's oratory, when such was the terrible 
picture he drew of the fate of unregenerate sinners that 
his listeners' hair was said actually to rise with fright. 



EAST AND WEST 23 

Savonarola came towards the end of the Renaissance, to 
give it its death-blow. By contrast there is a tablet on 
the right wall of the cathedral in honour of one who did 
much to bring about the paganism and sophistication 
against which the impassioned reformer uttered his fiercest 
denunciations : Marsilio Ficino (1433-1491), the neo- 
Platonist protege of Cosimo de' Medici, and friend both 
of Piero de' Medici and Lorenzo. To explain Marsilio's 
influence it is necessary to recede a little into history. 
In 1439 Cosimo de' Medici succeeded in transferring the 
scene of the Great Council of the Church to Florence. 
At this conference representatives of the Western Church, 
centred in Rome, met those of the Eastern Church, cen- 
tred in Constantinople, which was still Christian, for the 
purpose of discussing various matters, not the least of 
which was the protection of the Eastern Church against 
the Infidel. Not only was Constantinople continually 
threatened by the Turks, and in need of arms as well as 
sympathy, but the two branches of the Church were at 
enmity over a number of points. It was as much to heal 
these differences as to seek temporal aid that the Emperor 
John Palseologus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and a 
vast concourse of nobles, priests, and Greek scholars, ar- 
rived in Italy, and, after sojourning at Venice and Ferrara, 
moved on to Florence at the invitation of Cosimo. The 
Emperor resided in the Peruzzi palace, now no more, near 
S. Croce ; the Patriarch of Constantinople lodged (and as it 
chanced, died, for he was very old) at the Ferrantini 
palace, now the Casa Vernaccia, in the Borgo Pinti ; while 
Pope Eugenius was at the convent attached to S. Maria 
Novella. The meetings of the Council were held where 
we now stand — in the cathedral, whose dome had just 
been placed upon it all ready for them. 



24 THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

The Council failed in its purpose, and, as we know, 
Constantinople was lost some years later and the Great 
empire of which John Palseologus was the last ruler ceased 
to be. That, however, at the moment is beside the 
mark. The interesting thing to us is that among the 
scholars who came from Constantinople, bringing with them 
numbers of manuscripts and systems of thought wholly 
new to the Florentines, was one Georgius Gemisthos, a 
Greek philosopher of much personal charm and comeliness, 
who talked a bland and beautiful Platonism that was 
extremely alluring not only to his youthful listeners but 
also to Cosimo himself. Gemisthos was, however, a Greek, 
and Cosimo was too busy a man in a city of enemies, or at 
any rate of the envious, to be able to do much more than 
extend his patronage to the old man and despatch emis- 
saries to the East for more and more manuscripts; but 
discerning the allurements of the new gospel, Cosimo 
directed a Florentine enthusiast who knew Greek to spread 
the serene creed among his friends, who were all ripe for it, 
and this enthusiast was none other than a youthful scholar, 
by name Marsilio Ficino, connected with S. Lorenzo, 
Cosimo's family church, and the son of Cosimo's own 
physician. To the young and ardent Marsilio, Plato be- 
came a god and Gemisthos not less than divine for bringing 
the tidings. He kept a lamp always burning before Plato's 
bust, and later (under Cosimo) founded the Platonic Acad- 
emy, at which Plato's works were discussed, orations 
delivered, and new dialogues exchanged, between such keen 
minds as Pulci, Landini, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leon 
Battista Alberti, the architect and scholar, Pico della 
Mirandola, the precocious disputant and aristocratic 
mystic, Poliziano, the tutor of Lorenzo's sons, and Lorenzo 
the Magnificent himself. It was thus from the Greek in- 



THE BIRTH OF HUMANISM 25 

vasion of Florence that proceeded the stream of culture 
which is known as Humanism, and which, no doubt, in 
time, was so largly concerned in bringing about that in- 
difference to spiritual things which, leading to general 
laxity and indulgence, filled Savonarola with despair. 

I am not concerned to enter deeply into the subject of 
the Renaissance. But this must be said — that the new 
painting and sculpture, particularly the painting of Masac- 
cio and the sculpture of Donatello, had shown the world that 
the human being could be made the measure of the Divine. 
The Madonna and Christ had been related to life. The 
new learning, by leading these keen Tuscan intellects, so 
eager for reasonableness, to the Greek philosophers who 
were so wise and so calm without any of the conso- 
lations of Christianity, naturally set them wondering if 
there were not a religion of Humanity that was perhaps a 
finer thing than the religion that required all the machinery 
and intrigue of Rome. And when, as the knowledge of 
Greek spread and the minute examination of documents 
ensued, it was found that Rome had not disdained forgery 
to gain her ends, a blow was struck against the Church 
from which it never recovered ; — and how much of this was 
due to this Florentine Marsilio, sitting at the feet of the 
Greek Gemisthos, who came to Florence at the invitation 
of Cosimo de* Medici. 

The cathedral glass, as I say, is mostly overladen with 
grime ; but the circular windows in the dome seem to be 
magnificent in design. They are attributed to Ghiberti 
and Donatello, and are lovely in colour. The greens in 
particular are very striking. But the jewel of these 
circular windows of Florence is that by Ghiberti on the 
west wall of S. Croce. 

And here I leave the Duomo, with the counsel to visitors 



26 THE DUOMO II : ITS ASSOCIATIONS 

to Florence to make a point of entering it every day — not, 
as so many Florentines do, in order to make a short cut 
from the Via Calzaioli to the Via de' Servi, and vice versa, 
but to gather its spirit. It is different every hour in the 
day, and every hour the light enters it with new beauty. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DUOMO III I A CEREMONY AND A MUSEUM 

The Scoppio del Carro — The Pazzi beneficent — Holy Saturday's pro- 
gramme — April 6th, 1912 — The flying palle — The nervous pyrotechnist 
— The influence of noon — A little sister of the Duomo — Donatello's can- 
toria — Luca della Robbia's cantoria. 

IN the last chapter we saw the Pazzi family as very 
black sheep, although there are plenty of students of 
Florentine history who hold that any attempt to rid 
Florence of the Medici was laudable. In this chapter we 
see them in a kindlier situation as benefactors to the city. 
For it happened that when Pazzo de' Pazzi, a founder of 
the house, was in the Holy Land during the First Crusade, 
it was his proud lot to set the Christian banner on the 
walls of Jerusalem, and, as a reward, Godfrey of Boulogne 
gave him some flints from the Holy Sepulchre. These he 
brought to Florence, and they are now preserved at SS. 
Apostoli, the little church in the Piazza del Limbo, off the 
Borgo SS. Apostoli, and every year the flints are used to 
kindle the fire needed for the right preservation of Easter 
Day. Gradually the ceremony enlarged until it became a 
spectacle indeed, which the Pazzi family for centuries con- 
trolled. After the Pazzi conspiracy they lost it and the 
Signoria took it over ; but, on being pardoned, the Pazzi 
again resumed. 

The Carro is a car containing explosives, and the Scoppio 

27 



28 DUOMOIII: A CEREMONY AND A MUSEUM 

is its explosion. This car, after being drawn in procession 
through the streets by white oxen, is ignited by the sacred 
fire borne to it by a mechanical dove liberated at the high 
altar of the Duomo, and with its explosion Easter begins. 
There is still a Pazzi fund towards the expenses, but a few 
years ago the city became responsible for the whole pro- 
ceedings, and the ceremony as it is now given, under civic 
management, known as the Scoppio del Carro, is that which 
I saw on Holy Saturday last and am about to describe. 

First, however, let me state what had happened before 
the proceedings opened in the Piazza del Duomo. At six 
o'clock mass began at SS. Apostoli, lasting for more than 
two hours. At its close the celebrant was handed a plate 
on which were the sacred flints, and these he struck with a 
steel in view of the congregation, thus igniting a taper. 
The candle, in an ancient copper porta fuoco surmounted 
by a dove, was then lighted, and the procession of priests 
started off for the cathedral with their precious flame, 
escorted by a civic guard and various standard bearers. 
Their route was the Piazza del Limbo, along the Borgo 
SS. Apostoli to the Via Por S. Maria and through the 
Vacchereccia to the Piazza della Signoria, the Via Con- 
dotta, the Via del Proconsolo, to the Duomo, through 
whose central doors they passed, depositing the sacred 
burden at the high altar. I should add that anyone on 
the route in charge of a street shrine had the right to stop 
the procession in order to take a light from it ; while at SS. 
Apostoli women congregrated with tapers and lanterns in 
the hope of getting these kindled from the sacred flame, 
in order to wash their babies or cook their food in water 
heated with the fire. 

Meanwhile at seven o'clock the four oxen, which are 
kept in the Cascine all the year round and do no other 




THE CLOISTERS OF S. LORENZO, SHOWING THE WINDOWS OF THE 
BIBLIOTECA LAURENZIANA 



A POPULAR FESTIVAL 29 

work, had been harnessed to the car and had drawn 
it to the Piazza del Duomo, which was reached about 
nine. The oxen were then tethered by the Pisano doors 
of the Baptistery until needed again. 

After some haggling on the night before, I had secured 
a seat on a balcony facing Ghiberti's first Baptistery doors, 
for eleven lire, and to this place I went at half -past ten. 
The piazza was then filling up, and at a quarter to eleven 
the trams running between the Cathedral and the Baptis- 
tery were stopped. In this space was the car. The present 
one, which dates from 1622, is more like a catafalque, and 
unless one sees it in motion, with the massive white oxen 
pulling it, one cannot believe in it as a vehicle at all. It 
is some thirty feet high, all black, with trumpery coloured- 
paper festoons (concealing fireworks) upon it : trumpery as 
only the Roman Catholic Church can contrive. It stood 
in front of the Duomo some four yards from the Baptistery 
gates in a line with the Duomo's central doors and the high 
altar. The doors were open, seats being placed on each 
side of the aisle the whole distance, and people making a 
solid avenue. Down this avenue were to come the clergy, 
and above it was to be stretched the line on which the 
dove was to travel from the altar, with the Pazzi fire, to 
ignite the car. 

The space in front of the cathedral was cleared at about 
eleven, and cocked hats and red-striped trousers then be- 
came the most noticeable feature. The crowd was jolly 
and perhaps a little cynical; picture-postcard hawkers 
made most of the noise, and for some reason or other a for- 
lorn peasant took this opportunity to offer for sale two 
equally forlorn hedgehogs. Each moment the concourse 
increased, for it is a fateful day and every one wants to 
know the issue : because, you see, if the dove runs true, 



30 DUOMOIII: A CEREMONY AND A MUSEUM 

lights the car, and returns, as a good dove should, to the 
altar ark, there will be a prosperous vintage and the pyro- 
technist who controls the sacred bird's movements will re« 
ceive his wages. But if the dove runs defectively and there 
is any hitch, everyone is dismayed, for the harvest will be 
bad and the pyrotechnist will receive nothing. Once he 
was imprisoned when things went astray — and quite right 
too — but the Florentines have grown more lenient. 

At about a quarter past eleven a procession of clergy 
emerged from the Duomo and crossed the space to the 
Baptistery. First, boys and youths in surplices. Then 
some scarlet hoods, waddling. Then purple hoods and 
other colours, a little paunchier, waddling more, and 
lastly the archbishop, very sumptuous. All having disap- 
peared into the Baptistery, through Ghiberti's second gates, 
which I never saw opened before, the dove's wire was 
stretched and fastened, a matter needing much care ; and 
the crowds began to surge. The cocked hats and officers 
had the space all to themselves, with the car, the firemen, 
the pyrotechnist and the few privileged and very self- 
conscious civilians who were allowed inside. 

A curious incident, which many years ago might have 
been magnified into a portent, occurred while the ecclesi- 
astics were in the Baptistery. Some one either bought and 
liberated several air balloons, or the string holding them 
was surreptitiously cut ; but however it happened, the balls 
escaped and suddenly the crowd sent up a triumphant yell. 
At first I could see no reason for it, the Baptistery inter- 
vening, but then the balls swam into our ken and steadily 
floated over the cathedral out of sight amid tremendous 
satisfaction. And the portent ? Well, as they moved 
against the blue sky they formed themselves into precisely 
the pattern of the palle on the Medici escutcheon. That 



EASTER BEGINS 31 

is all. But think what that would have meant in the 
fifteenth century ; the nods and frowns it would have oc- 
casioned ; the dispersal of the Medici, the loss of power, 
and all the rest of it, that it would have presaged ! 

At about twenty to twelve the ecclesiastics returned and 
were swallowed up by the Duomo, and then excitement 
began to be acute. The pyrotechnist was not free from it ; 
he fussed about nervously ; he tested everything again and 
again ; he crawled under the car and out of it ; he talked 
to officials ; he inspected and re-inspected. Photographers 
began to adjust their distances; the detached men in 
bowlers looked at their watches ; the cocked hats drew 
nearer to the Duomo door. And then we heard a tearing 
noise. All eyes were turned to the great door and out 
rushed the dove emitting a wake of sparks, entered the car 
and was out again on its homeward journey before one 
realized what had happened. And then the explosions 
began, and the bells — silent since Thursday — broke out. 
How many explosions there were I do not know ; but they 
seemed to go on for ten minutes. 

This is a great moment not only for the spectator but 
for all Florence, for in myriad rooms mothers have been 
waiting, with their babies on their knees, for the first clang 
of the belfries, because if a child's eyes are washed then it 
is unlikely ever to have weak sight, while if a baby takes 
its first steps to this accompaniment its legs will not be 
bowed. 

At the last explosion the pyrotechnist, now a calm man 
once more and a proud one, approached the car, the fire- 
men poured water on smouldering parts, and the work of 
clearing up began. Then came the patient oxen, their 
horns and hooves gilt, and great masses of flowers on their 
heads, and red cloths with the lily of Florence on it over 



32 DUOMOIII: A CEREMONY AND A MUSEUM 

their backs — much to be regretted since they obliterated 
their beautiful white skins — and slowly the car lumbered 
off, and, the cocked hats relenting, the crowd poured after 
it and the Scoppio del Carro was over. 

The Duomo has a little sister in the shape of the Museo 
di Santa Maria del Fiore, or the Museo delP Opera del 
Duomo, situated in the Piazza opposite the apse ; and we 
should go there now. This museum, which is at once the 
smallest and, with the exception of the Natural History 
Museum, the cheapest of the Florentine museums, for it 
costs but half a lira, is notable for containing the two 
cantorie, or singing galleries, made for the cathedral, one 
by Donatello and one by Luca della Robbia. A cantoria 
by Donatello we shall soon see in its place in S. Lorenzo ; 
but that, beautiful as it is, cannot compare with this one 
with its procession of merry, dancing children, its massive- 
ness and grace, its joyous ebullitions of gold mosaic and 
blue enamel. Both the cantorie — Donatello's, begun in 
1433 and finished in 1439, and Luca's, begun in 1431 and 
finished in 1438 — fulfilled their melodious functions in the 
Duomo until 1688, when they were ruthlessly cleared 
away to make room for large wooden balconies to be used 
in connexion with the nuptials of Ferdinand de' Medici 
and the Princess Violante of Bavaria. In the year 1688 
taste was at a low ebb, and no one thought the deposed can- 
torie even worth preservation, so that they were broken 
up and occasionally levied upon for cornices and so forth. 
The fragments were collected and taken to the Bargello 
in the middle of the last century, and in 1883 Signor del 
Moro, the then architect of the Duomo (whose bust is 
in the courtyard of this museum), reconstructed them to 
the best of his ability in their present situation. It has 
to be remembered not only that, with the exception of the 



THE TWO CANTORIE 33 

figures, the galleries are not as their artists made them, 
lacking many beautiful accessories, but that, as Vasari tells 
us, Donatello deliberately designed his for a dim light. 
None the less, they remain two of the most delightful 
works of the Renaissance and two of the rarest treasures 
of Florence. 

The dancing boys behind the small pillars with their gold 
chequering, the brackets, and the urn of the cornice over 
the second pair of pillars from the right are all that remain 
of Donatello's own handiwork. All else is new and con- 
jectural. It is supposed that bronze heads of lions filled 
the two circular spaces between the brackets in the middle. 
But although the loss of the work as a whole is to be re- 
gretted, the dancing boys remain, to be for ever an inspi- 
ration and a pleasure. The Luca della Robbia cantoria 
opposite is not quite so triumphant a masterpiece, but 
from the point of view of suitability it is perhaps better. 
We can believe that Luca's children hymn the glory of 
the Lord, as indeed the inscription makes them, whereas 
Donatello's romp with a gladness that might easily be 
purely pagan. Luca's design is more formal, more con- 
ventional ; Donatello's is rich and free and fluid with per- 
sonality. The two end panels of Luca's are supplied in 
the cantoria by casts ; the originals are on the wall below 
and may be carefully studied. The animation and fervour 
of these choristers are unforgettable. 

It is well, while enjoying Donatello's work, to remember 
that Prato is only half an hour from Florence, and that 
there may be seen the open-air pulpit, built on the corner 
of the cathedral, which Donatello, with Michelozzo, his 
friend and colleague, made at the same time that the 
cantoria was in progress, and which in its relief of happy 
children is very similar, although not, I think, quite so 



34 DUOMOIII: A CEREMONY AND A MUSEUM 

remarkable. It lacks also the peculiarly naturalistic effect 
gained in the cantoria by setting the dancing boys behind 
the pillars, which undoubtedly, as comparison with the 
Luca shows, assists realism. The row of pillars attracts 
the eye first and the boys are thus thrown into a background 
which almost moves. 

Although the cantorie dominate the museum they must 
not be allowed to overshadow all else. A marble relief of 
the Madonna and Children by Agostino di Duccio (1418- 
1481) must be sought for : it is No. 77 and the children are 
the merriest in Florence. Another memorable Madonna 
and Child is No. 94, by Pagno di Lapo Portigiani (1406- 
1470), who has interest for us in this place as being one of 
Donatello's assistants, very possibly on this very cantoria, 
and almost certainly on the Prato pulpit. Everything 
here, it must be remembered, has some association with the 
Duomo and was brought here for careful preservation and 
that whoever has fifty centimes might take pleasure in 
seeing it ; but the great silver altar is from the Baptistery, 
and being made for that temple is naturally dedicated to 
the life of John the Baptist. Although much of it was the 
work of not the greatest modellers in the second half of 
the fourteenth century, three masters at least contributed 
later : Michelozzo adding the statue of the Baptist, Pol- 
laiuolo the side relief depicting his birth, and Verrocchio 
that of his death, which is considered one of the most re- 
markable works of this sculptor, whom we are to find so 
richly represented at the Bargello. Before leaving this 
room, look for 100 3 , an unknown terra-cotta of the Birth of 
Eve, which is both masterly and amusing, and 110 4 , a very 
lovely intaglio in wood. I might add that among the few 
paintings, all very early, is a S. Sebastian in whose 
sacred body I counted no fewer than thirty arrows ; which 



BRUNELLESCHI'S MODEL 35 

within my knowledge of pictures of this saint — not incon- 
siderable — is the highest number. 

The next room is given to models and architectural plans 
and drawings connected with the cathedral, the most 
interesting thing being Brunelleschi's own model for the 
lantern. On the stairs are a series of fine bas-reliefs by 
Bandinelli and Giovanni dell' Opera from the old choir 
screen of the Duomo, and downstairs, among many other 
pieces of sculpture, is a bust of Brunelleschi from a death- 
mask and several beautiful della Robbia designs for 
lunettes over doors. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

A short way with Veronese critics — Giotto's missing spire — Donatello's 
holy men — Giotto as encyclopaedist — The seven and twenty reliefs — Rus- 
kin in American — At the top of the tower — A sea of red roofs — The rest- 
ful Baptistery — Historic stones — An ex-Pope's tomb — Andrea Pisano's 
doors — Ghiberti's first doors — Ghiberti's second doors — Michelan- 
gelo's praise — A gentleman artist. 

IT was in 1332, as I have said, that Giotto was made 
capo-maestro, and on July 18th, 1334, the first stone 
of his campanile was laid, the understanding being that 
the structure was to exceed "in magnificence, height, and 
excellence of workmanship" anything in the world. As 
some further indication of the glorious feeling of patriot- 
ism then animating the Florentines, it may be remarked 
that when a Veronese who happened to be in Florence 
ventured to suggest that the city was aiming rather too 
high, he was at once thrown into gaol, and, on being set 
free when his time was done, was shown the treasury as 
an object lesson. Of the wealth and purposefulness of 
Florence at that time, in spite of the disastrous bellicose 
period she had been passing through, Villani the historian, 
who wrote history as it was being made, gives an excellent 
account, which Macaulay summarizes in his vivid way. 
Thus : "The revenue of the Republic amounted to three 
hundred thousand florins ; a sum which, allowing for the 
depreciation of the precious metals, was at least equiva- 

36 



FOURTEENTH CENTURY PROSPERITY 37 

lent to six hundred thousand pounds sterling; a larger 
sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded 
to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed 
two hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The 
cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for twelve 
hundred thousand florins ; a sum fully equal in exchange- 
able value to two millions and a half of our money. 
Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. 
Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, not 
of Florence only but of all Europe. The transactions of 
these establishments were sometimes of a magnitude which 
may surprise even the contemporaries of the Barings and 
the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward III of 
England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a 
time when the mark contained more silver than fifty shil- 
lings of the present day, and when the value of silver was 
more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its 
environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand chil- 
dren inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thou- 
sand children were taught to read ; twelve hundred studied 
arithmetic ; six hundred received a learned education.' * 

Giotto died in 1336, and after his death, as I have said, 
Andrea Pisano came in for a while ; to be followed by 
Talenti, who is said to have made considerable alterations in 
Giotto's design and to be responsible for the happy idea 
of increasing the height of the windows with the height of 
the tower and thus adding to the illusion of springing 
lightness. The topmost ones, so bold in size and so lovely 
with their spiral columns, almost seem to lift it. 

The campanile to-day is 276 feet in height, and Giotto 
proposed to add to that a spire of 105 feet. The Floren- 
tines completed the facade of the cathedral in 1887 and 
are now spending enormous sums on the Medici chapel at 



38 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

S. Lorenzo ; why should they not one day carry out their 
greatest artist's intention ? 

The campanile as a structure had been finished in 1387, 
but not for many years did it receive its statues, of which 
something must be said, although it is impossible to get 
more than a vague idea of them, so high are they. A cap- 
tive balloon should be arranged for the use of visitors. 
Those by Donatello, on the Baptistery side, are the most 
remarkable. The first of these — that nearest to the 
cathedral and the most striking as seen from the distant 
earth — is called John the Baptist, always a favourite subject 
with this sculptor, who, since he more than any at that 
thoughtful time endeavoured to discover and disclose the 
secret of character, is curiously unfortunate in the accident 
that has fastened names to these figures. This John, for 
example, bears no relation to his other Baptists ; nor does 
the next figure represent David, as is generally supposed, 
but owes that error to the circumstance that when the David 
that originally stood here was moved to the north side, 
the old plinth bearing his name was left behind. This 
famous figure is stated by Vasari to be a portrait of a Floren- 
tine merchant named Barduccio Cherichini, and for cen- 
turies it has been known as II Zuccone (or pumpkin) 
from its baldness. Donatello, according to Vasari, had a 
particular liking for the work, so much that he used to swear 
by it ; while, when engaged upon it, he is said to have so be- 
lieved in its reality as to exclaim, "Speak, speak ! or may a 
dysentery seize thee ! " It is now generally considered to rep- 
resent Job, and we cannot too much regret the impossibility 
of getting near enough to study it. Next is the Jeremiah, 
which, according to Vasari, was a portrait of another 
Florentine, but which, since he bears his name on a scroll, 
may none the less be taken to realize the sculptor's idea of 




THE PROCESSION OF THE MAGI 

FROM THE FRESCO BY BENOZZX GOZZOLI IN THE MEDiCl PALACE (NOW THE PALAZZO RICCARDl) 



THE TWENTY-SEVEN RELIEFS 39 

Jeremiah. It is (according to the photographs) a fine 
piece of rugged vivacity, and the head is absolutely that of 
a real man. On the opposite side of the tower is the 
magnificent Abraham's sacrifice from the same strong hand, 
and by it Habakkuk, who is no less near life than the 
Jeremiah and Job, but a very different type. At both 
Or San Michele and the Bargello we are to find Donatello 
perhaps in a finer mood than here, and comfortably visible. 

For most visitors to Florence and all disciples of Ruskin, 
the chief interest of the campanile ("The Shepherd's 
Tower" as he calls it) is the series of twenty-seven reliefs 
illustrating the history of the world and the progress of 
mankind, which are to be seen round the base, the design, 
it is supposed, of Giotto, executed by Andrea Pisano and 
Luca della Robbia. To Andrea are given all those on the 
west (7), south (7), east (5), and the two eastern ones on the 
north ; to Luca the remaining five on the north. Ruskin's 
fascinating analysis of these reliefs should most certainly be 
read (without a total forgetfulness of the shepherd's other 
activities as a painter, architect, humorist, and friend of 
princes and poets), but equally certainly not in the American 
pirated edition which the Florentine booksellers are so ready 
(to their shame) to sell you. Only Ruskin in his best mood 
of fury could begin to do justice to the misspellings and 
mispunctuations of this terrible production. 

Ruskin, I may say, believes several of the carvings to 
be from Giotto's own chisel as well as design, but other 
and more modern authorities disagree, although opinion 
now inclines to the belief that the designs for Pisano's 
Baptistery doors are also his. Such thoroughness and 
ingenuity were all in Giotto's way, and they certainly sug- 
gest his active mind. The campanile series begins at the 
west side with the creation of man. Among the most 



40 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

attractive are, I think, those devoted to agriculture, with 
the spirited oxen, to astronomy, to architecture, to weaving, 
and to pottery. Giotto was even so thorough as to give 
one relief to the conquest of the air ; and he makes Noah 
most satisfactorily drunk. Note also the Florentine fleur- 
de-lis round the base of the tower. Every fleur-de-lis in 
Florence is beautiful — even those on advertisements and 
fire-plugs — but few are more beautiful than these. 

I climbed the campanile one fine morning — 417 steps from 
the ground — and was well repaid ; but I think it is wiser 
to ascend the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, because one is 
higher there and, since the bulk of the dome, which in- 
trudes from the campanile, is avoided, one has a better all- 
round view. Florence seen from this eminence is very red — 
so uniformly so that many towers rise against it almost in- 
distinguishably, particularly the Bargello's and the Badia's. 
One sees at once how few straight streets there are — the 
Ricasoli standing out among them as the exception ; and 
one realizes how the city has developed outside, with its 
boulevards where the walls once were, leaving the gates iso- 
lated, and its cincture of factories. The occasional glimpses 
of cloisters and verdure among the red are very pleasant. 
One of the objects cut off by the cathedral dome is the 
English cemetery, but the modern Jewish temple stands 
out as noticeably almost as any of the ancient buildings. 
The Pitti looks like nothing but a barracks and the Porta 
Ferdinando has prominence which it gets from no other 
point. The roof of the Mercato Centrale is the ugliest 
thing in the view. While I was there the midday gun from 
the Boboli fortress was fired, instantly having its punc- 
tual double effect of sending all the pigeons up in a grey 
cloud of simulated alarm and starting every bell in the city. 

Those wishing to make either the campanile or Duomo 



"BEAUTIFUL SAN GIOVANNI" 41 

ascents must remember to do it early. The closing 
hour for the day being twelve, no one is allowed to start up 
after about a quarter past eleven : a very foolish arrange- 
ment, since Florence and the surrounding Apennines under 
a slanting sun are more beautiful than in the morning glare, 
and the ascent would be less fatiguing. As it was, on de- 
scending, after being so long at the top, I was severely 
reprimanded by the custodian, who had previously marked 
me down as a barbarian for refusing his offer of field-glasses. 
But the Palazzo Vecchio tower is open till five. 

The Baptistery is the beautiful octagonal building oppo- 
site the cathedral, and once the cathedral itself. It dates 
from the seventh or eighth century, but as we see it now 
is a product chiefly of the thirteenth. The bronze doors 
opposite the Via Calzaioli are open every day, a circum- 
stance which visitors, baffled by the two sets of Ghiberti 
doors always so firmly closed, are apt to overlook. All 
children born in Florence are still baptized here, and I 
watched one afternoon an old priest at the task, a tiny 
Florentine being brought in to receive the name of Tosca, 
which she did with less distaste than most, considering 
how thorough was his sprinkling. The Baptistery is rich 
in colour both without and within. The floor alone is 
a marvel of intricate inlaying, including the signs of the 
zodiac and a gnomic sentence which reads the same back- 
wards and forwards — "En gire torte sol ciclos et roterigne." 
On this very pavement Dante, who called the church his 
"beautiful San Giovanni," has walked. Over the altar is a 
gigantic and primitive Christ in mosaic, more splendid than 
spiritual. The mosaics in the recesses of the clerestory — 
grey and white — are the most soft and lovely of all. I be- 
lieve the Baptistery is the most restful place in Florence ; 
and this is rather odd considering that it is all marble and 



42 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

mosaic patterns. But its shape is very soothing, and age 
has given it a quality of its own, and there is just that 
touch of barbarism about it such as one gets in Byzantine 
buildings to lend it a peculiar character here. 

The most notable sculpture in the Baptistery is the tomb 
of the ex-Pope John XXIII, whose licentiousness was such 
that there was nothing for it but to depose and imprison 
him. He had, however, much money, and on his libera- 
tion he settled in Florence, presented a true finger of John 
the Baptist to the Baptistery, and arranged in return for 
his bones to repose in that sanctuary. One of his execu- 
tors was that Niccolo da Uzzano, the head of the noble 
faction in the city, whose coloured bust by Donatello is in 
the Bargello. The tomb is exceedingly fine, the work of 
Donatello and his partner Michelozzo, who were engaged 
to make it by Giovanni de* Medici, the ex-pontiff's friend, 
and the father of the great Cosimo. The design is all 
Donatello 's, and his the recumbent cleric, lying very natu- 
rally, hardly as if dead at all, a little on one side, so that 
his face is seen nearly full; the three figures beneath are 
Michelozzo's ; but Donatello probably carved the seated 
angels who display the scroll which bears the dead Pope's 
name. The Madonna and Child above are by Donatello's 
assistant, Pagno di Lapo Portigiani, a pretty relief by 
whom we saw in the Museum of the Cathedral. Being in 
red stone, and very dusty, like Ghiberti's doors (which want 
the hose regularly), the lines of the tomb are much im- 
paired. Donatello is also represented here by a Mary 
Magdalene in wood, on an altar at the left of the entrance 
door, very powerful and poignant. 

In the ordinary way, when visitors to Florence speak of 
the Baptistery doors they mean those opposite the Duomo, 
and when they go to the Bargello and look at the designs 



ANDREA PISANO'S DOORS 43 

made by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi in competition, they 
think that the competition was for those. But that is 
wrong. Ghiberti won his spurs with the doors on the 
north side, at which comparatively few persons look. The 
famous doors opposite the Duomo were commissioned many 
years later, when his genius was acknowledged and when 
he had become so accomplished as to do what he liked 
with his medium. Before, however, coming to Ghiberti, we 
ought to look at the work of an early predecessor but for 
whom there might have been no Ghiberti at all ; for while 
Ghiberti was at work with his assistants on these north 
doors, between 1403 and 1424, the place which they oc- 
cupy was filled by those executed seventy years earlier by 
Andrea Pisano (1270-1348), possibly from Giotto's designs, 
which are now at the south entrance, opposite the charm- 
ing little loggia at the corner of the Via Calzaioli, called 
the Bigallo. These represent twenty scenes in the life 
of S. John the Baptist, and below them are eight figures 
of cardinal and Christian virtues, and they employed their 
sculptor from 1330 to 1336. They have three claims to 
notice : as being admirably simple and vigorous in them- 
selves ; as having influenced all later workers in this 
medium, and particularly Ghiberti and Donatello ; and as 
being the bronze work of the sculptor of certain of the 
stone scenes round the base of Giotto's campanile. The 
panel in which the Baptist is seen up to his waist in the 
water is surely the very last word in audacity in bronze. 
Ghiberti was charged with making bronze do things that 
it was ill fitted for; but I do not know that even he 
moulded water — and transparent water — from it. 

The year 1399 is one of the most notable in the history 
of modern art, since it was then that the competition for 
the Baptistery gates was made public, this announcement 



44 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

being the spring from which many rivers flowed. In that 
year Lorenzo Ghiberti, a young goldsmith assisting his 
father, was twenty-one, and Filippo Brunelleschi, another 
goldsmith, was twenty-two, while Giotto had been dead 
sixty-three years and the impulse he had given to painting 
had almost worked itself out. The new doors were to be 
of the same shape and size as those by Andrea Pisano, 
which were already getting on for seventy years old, and 
candidates were invited to make a specimen relief to scale, 
representing the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac, although the 
subject-matter of the doors was to be the Life of S. John 
the Baptist. Among the judges was that Florentine 
banker whose name was beginning to be known in the city as 
a synonym for philanthropy, enlightenment, and sagacity, 
Giovanni de* Medici. In 1401 the specimens were ready, 
and after much deliberation as to which was the better, 
Ghiberti's or Brunelleschi's — assisted, some say, by Brunel- 
leschi's own advice in favour of his rival — the award was 
given to Ghiberti, and he was instructed to proceed with 
his task ; while Brunelleschi, as we have seen, being a man 
of determined ambition, left for Rome to study architec- 
ture, having made up his mind to be second to no one in 
whichever of the arts and crafts he decided to pursue. 
Here then was the first result of the competition — that it 
turned Brunelleschi to architecture. 

Ghiberti began seriously in 1403 and continued till 
1424, when the doors were finished ; but, in order to carry 
out the work, he required assistance in casting and so 
forth, and for that purpose engaged among others a sculp- 
tor named Donatello (born in 1386), a younger sculptor 
named Luca della Robbia (born in 1400), and a gigantic 
young painter called Masaccio (born in 1401), each of whom 
was destined, taking fire no doubt from Ghiberti and his 



GHIBERTI'S FIRST DOORS 45 

fine free way, to be a powerful innovator — Donatello (apart 
from other and rarer achievements) being the first sculptor 
since antiquity to place a statue on a pedestal around 
which observers could walk; Masaccio being the first 
painter to make pictures in the modern use of the term, 
with men and women of flesh and blood in them, as distin- 
guished from decorative saints, and to be by example the 
instructor of all the greatest masters, from his pupil Lippo 
Lippi to Leonardo and Michelangelo; and Luca della 
Robbia being the inspired discoverer of an inexpensive 
means of glazing terra-cotta so that his beautiful and 
radiant Madonnas could be brought within the purchasing 
means of the poorest congregation in Italy. These alone 
are remarkable enough results, but when we recollect also 
that Brunelleschi's defeat led to the building of the cathe- 
dral dome, the significance of the event becomes the more 
extraordinary. 

The doors, as I say, were finished in 1424, after twenty- 
one years' labour, and the Signoria left the Palazzo Vecchio 
in procession to see their installation. In the number and 
shape of the panels Pisano set the standard, but Ghiberti's 
work resembled that of his predecessor very little in other 
ways, for he had a mind of domestic sweetness without aus- 
terity and he was interested in making everything as easy 
and fluid and beautiful as might be. His thoroughness 
recalls Giotto in certain of his frescoes. The impression 
left by Pisano's doors is akin to that left by reading the 
New Testament ; but Ghiberti makes everything happier 
than that. Two scenes — both on the level of the eye — I 
particularly like : the " Annunciation," with its little, lithe, 
reluctant Virgin, and the "Adoration." The border of 
the Pisano doors is, I think, finer than that of Ghiberti's ; 
but it is a later work. 



46 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

Looking at them even now, with eyes that remember so 
much of the best art that followed them and took inspira- 
tion from them, we can understand the better how delighted 
Florence must have been with this new picture gallery and 
how the doors were besieged by sightseers. But greater 
still was to come. Ghiberti at once received the commission 
to make two more doors on his own scale for the south side 
of the Baptistery, and in 1425 he had begun on them. 
These were not finished until 1452, so that Ghiberti, then 
a man of seventy-four, had given practically his whole life 
to the making of four bronze doors. It is true that he did 
a few other things beside, such as the casket of S. Zenobius 
in the Duomo, and the Baptist and S. Matthew for Or San 
Michele ; but he may be said justly to live by his doors, 
and particularly by the second pair, although it was the 
first pair that had the greater effect on his contemporaries 
and followers. 

Among his assistants on these were Antonio Pollaiuolo 
(born in 1429), who designed the quail in the left border, 
and Paolo Uccello (born in 1397), both destined to be men 
of influence. The bald head on the right door is a portrait 
of Ghiberti ; that of the old man on the left is his father, 
who helped him to polish the original competition plaque. 
Although commissioned for the south side they were placed 
where they now are, on the east, as being most worthy of 
the position of honour, and Pisano's doors, which used to 
be here, were moved to the south, where they now are. 

On Ghiberti's workshop opposite S. Maria Nuova, in the 
Via Bufalini, the memorial tablet mentions Michelangelo's 
praise — that these doors were beautiful enough to be the 
Gates of Paradise. After that what is an ordinary person 
to say ? That they are lovely is a commonplace. But 
they are more. They are so sensitive ; bronze, the medium 



GHIBERTI'S SECOND DOORS 47 

which Horace has called, by implication, the most durable 
of all, has become in Ghiberti's hands almost as soft as wax 
and tender as flesh. It does all he asks ; it almost moves ; 
every trace of sternness has vanished from it. Nothing in 
plastic art that we have ever seen or shall see is more easy 
and ingratiating than these almost living pictures. 

Before them there is steadily a little knot of admirers, and 
on Sundays you may always see country people explaining 
the panels to each other. Every one has his favourite among 
these fascinating Biblical scenes, and mine are Cain and 
Abel, with the ploughing, and Abraham and Isaac, with 
its row of fir trees. It has been explained by the purists 
that the sculptor stretched the bounds of plastic art too 
far and made bronze paint pictures ; but most persons 
will agree to ignore that. Of the charm of Ghiberti's mind 
the border gives further evidence, with its fruits and foliage, 
birds and woodland creatures, so true to life, and here fixed 
for all time, so naturally, that if these animals should ever 
(as is not unlikely in Italy where everyone has a gun and 
shoots at his pleasure) become extinct, they could be 
created again from these designs. 

Ghiberti, who enjoyed great honour in his life and a 
considerable salary as joint architect of the dome with 
Brunelleschi, died three years after the completion of the 
second doors and was buried in S. Croce. His place in 
Florentine art is unique and glorious. 

The broken porphyry pillars by these second doors were 
a gift from Pisa to Florence in recognition of Florence's 
watchfulness over Pisa while the Pisans were away sub- 
duing the Balearic islanders. 

The bronze group over Ghiberti's first doors, representing 
John the Baptist preaching between a Pharisee and a 
Levite, are the work (either alone or assisted by his master 



48 THE CAMPANILE AND THE BAPTISTERY 

Leonardo da Vinci) of an interesting Florentine sculptor, 
Giovanni Francesco Rustici (1474-1554), who was remark- 
able among the artists of his time in being what we should 
call an amateur, having a competence of his own and the 
manners of a patron. Placing himself under Verrocchio, 
he became closely attached to Leonardo, a fellow-pupil, 
and made him his model rather than the older man. He 
took his art lightly, and lived, in Vasari's phrase, "free 
from care," having such beguilements as a tame menagerie 
(Leonardo, it will be remembered, loved animals too and 
had a habit of buying small caged birds in order to set 
them free), and two or three dining clubs, the members of 
which vied with each other in devising curious and exotic 
dishes. Andrea del Sarto, for example, once brought as 
his contribution to the feast a model of this very church 
we are studying, the Baptistery, of which the floor was 
constructed of jelly, the pillars of sausages, and the choir 
desk of cold veal, while the choristers were roast thrushes. 
Rustici further paved the way to a life free from care by ap- 
pointing a steward of his estate whose duty it was to see that 
his money box, to which he went whenever he wanted any- 
thing, always had money in it. This box he never locked, 
having learned that he need fear no robbery by once leav- 
ing his cloak for two days under a bush and then finding 
it again. "This world," he exclaimed, "is too good: it 
will not last." Among his pets were a porcupine trained 
to prick the legs of his guests under the table "so that 
they drew them in quickly"; a raven that spoke like a 
human being ; an eagle, and many snakes. He also studied 
necromancy, the better to frighten his apprentices. He 
left Florence in 1528, after the Medici expulsion, and, like 
Leonardo, took service with Francis the First. He died at 
the age of eighty. 



RUSTICI'S GROUP 49 

I had an hour and more exactly opposite the Rustici group, 
on the same level, while waiting for the Scoppio del Carro, 
and I find it easy to believe that Leonardo himself had a 
hand in the work. The figure of the Baptist is superb, 
the attitude of his listeners masterly. 



E 



CHAPTER V 

THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

An evasion of history — " II Caparra " — The Gozzoli frescoes — Gio- 
vanni de' Medici (di Bicci) — Cosimo de' Medici — The first banish- 
ment — Piero de' Medici — Lorenzo de' Medici — Piero di Lorenzo de' 
Medici — The second banishment — Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici — 
Leo X — Lorenzo di Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici — Clement VII — 
Third banishment of the Medici — The siege of Florence — Alessandro 
de' Medici — Ippolito de' Medici — Lorenzino de' Medici — Giovanni 
delle Bande Nere — Cosimo I — The Grand Dukes. 

THE natural step from the Baptistery would be to the 
Uffizi. But for us not yet; because in order to 
understand Florence, and particularly the Florence that 
existed between the extreme dates that I have chosen as 
containing the fascinating period — namely 1296, when the 
Duomo was begun, and 1564, when Michelangelo died — 
one must understand who and what the Medici were. 

While I have been enjoying the pleasant task of writing 
this book — which has been more agreeable than any literary 
work I have ever done — I have continually been conscious 
of a plaintive voice at my shoulder, proceeding from one 
of the vigilant and embarrassing imps who sit there and do 
duty as conscience, inquiring if the time is not about ripe 
for introducing that historical sketch of Florence without 
which no account such as this can be rightly understood. 
And ever I have replied with words of a soothing and pro- 
crastinating nature. But now that we are face to face 

50 




THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI. DUKE OF URBINO 

BY MICHELANGELO IN THE NEW SACRISTY OF S. LORENZO 



THE MEDICI 51 

with the Medici family, in their very house, I am conscious 
that the occasion for that historical sketch is here indeed, 
and equally I am conscious of being quite incapable of 
supplying it. For the history of Florence between, say, 
the birth of Giotto or Dante and the return of Cosimo de* 
Medici from exile, when the absolute Medici rule began, is 
so turbulent, crowded, and complex that it would require 
the whole of this volume to describe it. The changes in 
the government of the city would alone occupy a good 
third, so constant and complicated were they. I should 
have to explain the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Neri 
and the Bianchi, the Guilds and the Priors, the gonfalonieri 
and the podesta, the secondo popolo and the buonuomini. 

Rather than do this imperfectly I have chosen to do it 
not at all ; and the curious must resort to historians proper. 
But there is at the end of the volume a table of the chief 
dates in Florentine and European history in the period 
chosen, together with births and deaths of artists and poets 
and other important persons, so that a bird's-eye view of the 
progress of affairs can be quickly gained, while in this 
chapter I offer an outline of the great family of rulers of 
Florence who made the little city an aesthetic lawgiver 
to the world and with whom her later fame, good or ill, is 
indissolubly united. For the rest, is there not the library ? 

The Medici, once so powerful and stimulating, are still 
ever in the background of Florence as one wanders hither 
and thither. They are behind many of the best pictures and 
most of the best statues. Their escutcheon is everywhere. 
I ought, I believe, to have made them the subject of my 
first chapter. But since I did not, let us without further 
delay turn to the Via Cavour, which runs away to the north 
from the Baptistery, being a continuation of the Via de' 
Martelli, and pause at the massive and dignified palace at 



52 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

the first corner on the left. For that is the Medici's home ; 
and afterwards we will step into S. Lorenzo and see the 
church which Brunelleschi and Donatello made beautiful 
and Michelangelo wonderful that the Medici might lie 
there. 

Visitors go to the Riccardi palace rather to see Gozzoli's 
frescoes than anything else; and indeed apart from the 
noble solid Renaissance architecture of Michelozzo there is 
not much else to see. In the courtyard are certain frag- 
ments of antique sculpture arranged against the walls, and 
a sarcophagus is shown in which an early member of the 
family, Guccio de' Medici, who was gonfalonier in 1299, 
once reposed. There too are Donatello's eight medallions, 
but they are not very interesting, being only enlarged 
copies of old medals and cameos and not notable for his 
own characteristics. 

Hence it is that after Gozzoli by far the most interest- 
ing part of this building is its associations. For here lived 
Cosimo de' Medici, whose building of the palace was inter- 
rupted by his banishment as a citizen of dangerous ambition ; 
here lived Piero de' Medici, for whom Gozzoli worked ; 
here was born and here lived Lorenzo the Magnificent. To 
this palace came the Pazzi conspirators to lure Giuliano to 
the Duomo and his doom. Here did Charles VIII — Savona- 
rola's "Flagellum Dei" — lodge and loot, and it was here 
that Capponi frightened him with the threat of the Floren- 
tine bells ; hither came, in 1494, the fickle and terrible Flor- 
entine mob, always passionate in its pursuit of change and 
excitement, and now inflamed by the sermons of Savon- 
arola, to destroy the priceless manuscripts and works 
of art; here was brought up for a year or so the little 
Catherine de* Medici, and next door was the house in which 
Alessandro de' Medici was murdered. 



THE MEDICI BALLS 53 

It was in the seventeenth century that the palace passed 
to the Riccardi family, who made many additions. A 
century later Florence acquired it, and to-day it is the seat 
of the Prefect of the city. Cosimo's original building was 
smaller ; but much of it remains untouched. The exquisite 
cornice is Michelozzo's original, and the courtyard has 
merely lost its statues, among which are DonatehVs Judith, 
now in the Loggia de' Lanzi, and his bronze David, now 
in the Bargello, while Verrocchio's David was probably 
on the stairs. The escutcheon on the corner of the house 
gives us the period of its erection. The seven plain balls 
proclaim it Cosimo's. Each of the Medici sported these 
palle, although each had also his private crest. Under 
Giovanni, Cosimo's father, the balls were eight in number ; 
under Cosimo, seven ; under Piero, seven, with the fleur-de- 
lis of France on the uppermost, given him by Louis XI ; 
under Lorenzo, six ; and as one walks about Florence one 
can approximately fix the date of a building by remember- 
ing these changes. How many times they occur on the 
facades of Florence and its vicinity, probably no one could 
say; but they are everywhere. The French wits, who 
were amused to derive Catherine de' Medici from a family 
of apothecaries, called them pills. 

The beautiful lantern at the corner was added by Lorenzo 
and was the work of an odd ironsmith in Florence for whom 
he had a great liking — Niccolo Grosso. For Lorenzo had 
all that delight in character which belongs so often to the 
born patron and usually to the born connoisseur. This 
Grosso was a man of humorous independence and bluntness. 
He had the admirable custom of carrying out his commissions 
in the order in which they arrived, so that if he was at 
work upon a set of fire-irons for a poor client, not even 
Lorenzo himself (who as a matter of fact often tried) could 



54 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

induce him to turn to something more lucrative. The rich 
who cannot wait he forced to wait. Grosso also always 
insisted upon something in advance and payment on de- 
livery, and pleasantly described his workshop as being the 
Sign of the Burning Books, — since if his books were burnt 
how could he enter a debt ? This rule earned for him from 
Lorenzo the nickname of "II Caparra" (earnest money). 
Another of Grosso's eccentricities was to refuse to work 
for Jews. 

Within the palace, up stairs, is the little chapel which 
Gozzoli made so gay and fascinating that it is probably 
the very gem among the private chapels of the world. 
Here not only did the Medici perform their devotions — 
Lorenzo's corner seat is still shown, and anyone may sit 
in it — but their splendour and taste are reflected on the 
walls. Cosimo, as we shall see when we reach S. Marco, 
invited Fra Angelico to paint upon the walls of that 
convent sweet and simple frescoes to the glory of God. 
Piero employed Fra Angelico's pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, to 
decorate this chapel. 

In the year 1439, as chapter II related, through the 
instrumentality of Cosimo a great episcopal Council was 
held at Florence, at which John Palseologus, Emperor of 
the East, met Pope Eugenius IV. In that year Cosimo's 
son Piero was twenty-three, and Gozzoli nineteen, and 
probably upon both, but certainly on the young artist, such 
pomp and splendour and gorgeousness of costume as then 
were visible in Florence made a deep impression. When 
therefore Piero, after becoming head of the family, decided 
to decorate the chapel with a procession of Magi, it is not 
surprising that the painter should recall this historic oc- 
casion. We thus get the pageantry of the East with more 
than common realism, while the portraits, or at any rate rep- 



GOZZOLFS FRESCOES 55 

resentations, of the Patriarch of Constantinople (the first 
king) and the Emperor (the second king) are here, together 
with those of certain Medici, for the youthful third king is 
none other than Piero's eldest son Lorenzo. Among their 
followers are (the third on the left) Cosimo de' Medici, 
who is included as among the living, although, like the 
Patriarch of Constantinople, he was dead, and his brother 
Lorenzo (the middle one of the three), whose existence is 
forgotten so completely until the accession of Cosimo I, 
in 153?, brings his branch of the family into power ; while 
on the right is Piero de' Medici himself. Piero's second 
son Giuliano is on the white horse, preceded by a negro 
carrying his bow. The head immediately above Giuliano 
I do not know, but that one a little to the left above it is 
Gozzoli's own. Among the throng are men of learning 
who either came to Florence from the East or Florentines 
who assimilated their philosophy — such as Georgius 
Gemisthos, Marsilio Ficino, and perhaps certain painters 
among them, all proteges of Cosimo and Piero, and all 
makers of the Renaissance. 

The assemblage alone, apart altogether from any beauty 
and charm that the painting possesses, makes these frescoes 
valuable. But the painting is a delight. We have a 
pretty Gozzoli in our National Gallery — No. 283 — but 
it gives no indication of the ripeness and richness and inci- 
dent of this work ; while the famous Biblical series in the 
Campo Santo of Pisa has so largely perished as to be scarcely 
evidence to his colour. The first impression made by the 
Medici frescoes is their sumptuousness. When Gozzoli 
painted — if the story be true — he had only candle light : 
the window over the altar is new. But think of candle 
light being all the illumination of these walls as the 
painter worked ! A new door and window have also been 



5Q THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

cut in the wall opposite the altar close to the three 
daughters of Piero, by vandal hands ; and " Bruta, bruta ! " 
says the guardian, very rightly. 

The landscape behind the procession is hardly less in- 
teresting than the procession itself ; but it is when we come 
to the meadows of paradise, with the angels and roses, 
the cypresses and birds, in the two chancel scenes, that 
this side of Gozzoli's art is most fascinating. He has 
travelled a long way from his master Fra Angelico here : 
the heaven is of the visible rather than the invisible eye ; 
sense is present as well as the rapturous spirit. The little 
Medici who endured the tedium of the services here are 
to be felicitated with upon such an adorable presentment 
of glory. With plenty of altar candles the sight of these 
gardens of the blest must have beguiled many a mass. 
Thinking here in England upon the Medici chapel, I find 
that the impression it has left upon me is chiefly cypresses 
— cypresses black and comely, disposed by a master hand, 
with a glint of gold among them. 

The picture that was over the altar has gone. It was a 
Fra Lippo Lippi and is now in Berlin. 

The first of the Medici family to rise to the highest 
power was Giovanni d'Averardo de' Medici (known as 
Giovanni di Bicci), 1360-1429, who, a wealthy banker 
living in what is now the Piazza del Duomo, was well 
known for his philanthropy and interest in the welfare of 
the Florentines, but does not come much into public notice 
until 1401, when he was appointed one of the judges in the 
Baptistery door competition. He was a retiring, watchful 
man. Whether he was personally ambitious is not too 
evident, but he was opposed to tyranny and was the steady 
foe of the Albizzi faction, who at that time were endeav- 
ouring to obtain supreme power in Florentine affairs. In 



COSIMO PATER 57 

1419 Giovanni increased his popularity by founding the 
Spedale degli Innocenti, and in 1421 he was elected gon- 
falonier, or, as we might now say, President of the Republic. 
In this capacity he made his position secure and reduced 
the nobles (chief of whom was Niccolo da Uzzano) to 
political weakness. Giovanni died in 1429, leaving one 
son, Cosimo, aged forty, a second, Lorenzo, aged thirty- 
four, a fragrant memory and an immense fortune. 

To Lorenzo, who remained a private citizen, we shall re- 
turn in time ; it is Cosimo (1389-1464) with whom we are 
now concerned. Cosimo de' Medici was a man of great 
mental and practical ability : he had been educated as well 
as possible ; he had a passion both for art and letters ; he 
inherited his father's financial ability and generosity, while 
he added to these gifts a certain genius for the manage- 
ment of men. One of the first things that Cosimo did 
after his father's death was to begin the palace where we 
now are, rejecting a plan by Brunelleschi as too splendid, 
and choosing instead one by Michelozzo, the partner of 
Donatello, two artists who remained his personal friends 
through life. Cosimo selected this site, in what was then 
the Via Larga but is now the Via Cavour, partly because 
his father had once lived there, and partly because it was 
close to S. Lorenzo, which his father, with six other families, 
had begun to rebuild, a work he intended himself to 
carry on. 

The palace was begun in 1430 and was still in progress 
in 1433 when the Albizzi, who had always viewed the rise 
of the Medici family with apprehension and misgiving, and 
were now strengthened by the death of Niccolo da Uzzano, 
who, though powerful, had been a very cautious and temper- 
ate adviser, succeeded in getting a majority in the Signoria 
and passing a sentence of banishment on the whole Medici 



58 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

tribe as being too rich and ambitious to be good citizens 
of a simple and frugal Republic. Cosimo therefore, after 
some days of imprisonment in the tower of the Palazzo 
Vecchio, during which he expected execution at any moment, 
left Florence for Venice, taking his architect with him. In 
1434, however, the Florentines, realizing that under the 
Albizzi they were losing their independence, and what was 
to be a democracy was become an oligarchy, revolted ; and 
Cosimo was recalled, and, like his father, was elected gon- 
falonier. With this recall began his long supremacy ; for 
he returned like a king and like a king remained, quickly 
establishing himself as the leading man in the city, the 
power behind the Signoria. Not only did he never lose 
that position, but he made it so naturally his own that 
when he died he was able to transmit it to his son. 

Cosimo de* Medici was, I think, the wisest and best 
ruler that Florence ever had and ranks high among the 
rulers that any state ever had. But he changed the Flor- 
entines from an independent people to a dependent one. 
In his capacity of Father of his Country he saw to it that 
his children lost their proud spirit. He had to be abso- 
lute ; and this end he achieved in many ways, but chiefly 
by his wealth, which made it possible to break the rich 
rebel and to enslave the poor. His greatest asset — next 
his wealth — was his knowledge of the Florentine character. 
To know anything of this capricious, fickle, turbulent folk 
even after the event was in itself a task of such magnitude 
that almost no one else had compassed it ; but Cosimo did 
more, he knew what they were likely to do. By this 
knowledge, together with his riches, his craft, his tact, his 
business ramifications as an international banker, his open- 
handedness and air of personal simplicity, Cosimo made 
himself a power. 



PIERO DE' MEDICI 59 

For Florence he could not do enough. By inviting the 
Pope and the Greek Emperor to meet there he gave it 
great political importance, and incidentally brought about 
the New Learning. He established the Platonic Academy 
and formed the first public library in the west. He rebuilt 
and endowed the monastery of S. Marco. He built and 
rebuilt other churches. He gave Donatello a free hand in 
sculpture and Fra Lippo Lippi and Fra Angelico in painting. 
He distributed altogether in charity and churches four hun- 
dred thousand of those golden coins which were invented by 
Florence and named florins after her — a sum equal to a 
million pounds of to-day. In every direction one comes 
upon traces of his generosity and thoroughness. After his 
death it was decided that as Pater Patriae, or Father of 
his Country, he should be for ever known. 

Cosimo died in 1464, leaving an invalid son, Piero, aged 
forty-eight, known for his almost continuous gout as 
II Gottoso. Giovanni and Cosimo had had to work for 
their power; Piero stepped naturally into it, although 
almost immediately he had to deal with a plot — the first 
for thirty years — to ruin the Medici prestige, the leader of 
which was that Luca Pitti who began the Pitti palace in order 
to have a better house than the Medici. The plot failed, 
not a little owing to young Lorenzo de' Medici's address, 
and the remaining few years of Piero 's life were tranquil. 
He was a quiet, kindly man with the traditional family 
love of the arts, and it was for him that Gozzoli worked. 
He died in 1469, leaving two sons, Lorenzo (1449-1492) 
and Giuliano (1453-1478). 

Lorenzo had been brought up as the future leading citi- 
zen of Florence : he had every advantage of education and 
environment, and was rich in the aristocratic spirit which 
often blossoms most richly in the second or third generation 



60 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

of wealthy business families. Giovanni had been a banker 
before everything, Cosimo an administrator, Piero a faith- 
ful inheritor of his father's wishes ; it was left for Lorenzo 
to be the first poet and natural prince of the Medici blood. 
Lorenzo continued to bank but mismanaged the work and 
lost heavily; while his poetical tendencies no doubt dis- 
tracted his attention generally from affairs. Yet such was his 
sympathetic understanding and his native splendour and 
gift of leadership that he could not but be at the head of 
everything, the first to be consulted and ingratiated. 
Not only was he the first Medici poet but the first of the 
family to marry not for love but for policy, and that too 
was a sign of decadence. 

Lorenzo came into power when only twenty, and at the 
age of forty-two he was dead, but in the interval, by his 
interest in every kind of intellectual and artistic activity, 
by his passion for the greatness and glory of Florence, he 
made for himself a name that must always connote liber- 
ality, splendour, and enlightenment. But it is beyond 
question that under Lorenzo the Florentines changed 
deeply and for the worse. The old thrift and simplicity 
gave way to extravagance and ostentation ; the old faith 
gave way too, but that was not wholly the effect of Lorenzo's 
natural inclination towards Platonic philosophy, fostered 
by his tutor Marsilio Ficino and his friends Poliziano and 
Pico della Mirandola, but was due in no small measure also 
to the hostility of Pope Sixtus, which culminated in the 
Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and the murder of Giuliano. 
Looking at the history of Florence from our present 
vantage-point we can see that although under Lorenzo the 
Magnificent she was the centre of the world's culture and 
distinction, there was behind this dazzling front no serious- 
ness of purpose. She was in short enjoying the fruits of 




LOOKING ALONG THE VIA CALZAIOLI FROM THE BAPTISTERY, 
SHOWING THE BIGALLO AND THE TOP OF OR SAN MICHELE 



THE SECOND BANISHMENT 61 

her labours as though the time of rest had come ; and this 
when strenuousness was more than ever important. Lorenzo 
carried on every good work of his father and grandfather 
(he spent £65,000 a year in books alone) and was as jealous 
of Florentine interests ; but he was also " The Magnificent," 
and in that lay the peril. Florence could do with wealth 
and power, but magnificence went to her head. 

Lorenzo died in 1492, leaving three sons, of whom the 
eldest, Piero (1471-1503), succeeded him. Never was such 
a decadence. In a moment the Medici prestige, which had 
been steadily growing under Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo until 
it was world famous, crumbled to dust. Piero was a coarse- 
minded, pleasure-loving youth — " The Headstrong " 
his father had called him — whose one idea of power was to 
be sensual and tyrannical ; and the enemies of Florence 
and of Italy took advantage of this fact. Savonarola's 
sermons had paved the way from within too. In 1494 
Charles VIII of France marched into Italy ; Piero pulled 
himself together and visited the king to make terms for 
Florence, but made such terms that on returning to the 
city he found an order of banishment and obeyed it. On 
November 9th, 1494, he and his family were expelled, 
and the mob, forgetting so quickly all that they owed to 
the Medici who had gone before, rushed to this beautiful 
palace and looted it. The losses that art and learning 
sustained in a few hours can never be estimated. A certain 
number of treasures were subsequently collected again, 
such as Donatello's David and Verrocchio's David, while 
Donatello's Judith was removed to the Palazzo Vecchio, 
where an inscription was placed upon it saying that her 
short way with Holof ernes was a warning to all traitors ; 
but priceless pictures, sculpture, and MSS. were ruthlessly 
demolished. 



62 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

In the chapter on S. Marco we shall read of what experi- 
ments in government the Florentines substituted for that 
of the Medici, Savonarola for a while being at the head 
of the government, although only for a brief period which 
ended amid an orgy oflawlessness ; and then, after a restless 
period of eighteen years, in which Florence had every claw 
cut and was weakened also by dissension, the Medici returned 
— the change being the work of Lorenzo's second son, Gio- 
vanni de' Medici, who on the eve of becoming Pope Leo X 
procured their reinstatement, thus justifying the wisdom 
of his father in placing him in the Church. Piero having 
been drowned long since, his admirable but ill-starred 
brother Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, now thirty-three, as- 
sumed the control, always under Leo X ; while their Cousin, 
Giulio, also a Churchman, and the natural son of the 
murdered Giuliano, was busy, behind the scenes, with the 
family fortunes. 

Giuliano lived only till 1516 and was succeeded by 
his nephew Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, a son of Piero, 
a young man of no more political use than his father, 
and one who quickly became almost equally unpopular. 
Things indeed were going so badly that Leo X sent Giulio 
de' Medici (now a cardinal) from Rome to straighten them 
out, and by some sensible repeals he succeeded in allaying 
a little of the bitterness in the city. Lorenzo had one 
daughter, born in this palace, who was destined to make his- 
tory — Catherine de' Medici — and no son. When therefore 
he died in 1519, at the age of twenty-seven, after a life 
of vicious selfishness (which, however, was no bar to his 
having the noblest tomb in the world at S. Lorenzo), the 
succession should have passed to the other branch of 
the Medici family, the descendants of old Giovanni's second 
son Lorenzo, brother of Cosimo. But Giulio, at Rome, 



POPE CLEMENT VII 63 

always at the ear of the indolent, pleasure-loving Leo X, 
had other projects. Born in 1478, the illegitimate son 
of a charming father, Giulio had none of the great Medici 
traditions, and the Medici name never stood so low as 
during his period of power. Himself illegitimate, he was 
the father of an illegitimate son, Alessandro, for whose 
advancement he toiled much as Alexander VI had toiled for 
that of Caesar Borgia. He had not the black, bold wicked- 
ness of Alexander VI, but as Pope Clement VII, which he 
became in 1523, he was little less admirable. He was 
cunning, ambitious, and tyrannical, and during his pontifi- 
cate he contrived not only to make many powerful enemies 
and to see both Rome and Florence under siege, but to lose 
England for the Church. 

We move, however, too fast. The year is 1519 and 
Lorenzo is dead, and the rightful heir to the Medici wealth 
and power was to be kept out. To do this Giulio himself 
moved to Florence and settled in the Medici palace, and 
on his return to Rome Cardinal Passerini was installed in 
the Medici palace in his stead, nominally as the custodian 
of little Catherine de' Medici and Ippolito, a boy of ten, 
the illegitimate son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. That 
Florence should have put up with this Roman control 
shows us how enfeebled was her once proud spirit. In 1521 
Leo X died, to be succeeded, in spite of all Giulio's efforts, 
by Adrian of Utrecht, as Adrian VI, a good, sincere man 
who, had he lived, might have enormously changed the 
course not only of Italian but of English history. He 
survived, however, for less than two years, and then came 
Giulio's chance, and he was elected Pope Clement VII. 

Clement's first duty was to make Florence secure, and 
he therefore sent his son Alessandro, then about thirteen, 
to join the others at the Medici palace, which thus now 



64 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

contained a resident cardinal, watchful of Medici interests ; 
a legitimate daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (but 
owing to quarrels she was removed to a convent) ; an ille- 
gitimate son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, the nominal 
heir and already a member of the Government ; and the 
Pope's illegitimate son of whose origin, however, nothing 
was said, although it was implied that Lorenzo, Duke 
of Nemours, was his father. 

This was the state of affairs during Clement's war with 
the Emperor Charles V, 1 which ended with the siege of 
Rome and the imprisonment of the Pope in the Castle of 
S. Angelo for some months until he contrived to escape 
to Orvieto ; and meanwhile Florence, realizing his power- 
lessness, uttered a decree again banishing the Medici family, 
and in 1527 they were sent forth from the city for the 
third time. But even now, when the move was so safe, 
Florence lacked courage to carry it out until a member of 
the Medici family, furious at the presence of the base-born 
Medici in the palace, and a professed hater of her base- 
born uncle Clement VII and all his ways — Clarice Strozzi, 
nee Clarice de' Medici, granddaughter of Lorenzo the 
Magnificent — came herself to this house and drove the 
usurpers from it with her extremely capable tongue. 

To explain clearly the position of the Florentine Republic 
at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, 
but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating 
surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was 
able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor 
Charles V and Francis I of France, by which Charles was 
left master of Italy, while his partner and ally in these 
transactions, Clement, expected for his own share certain 

1 It was Charles V who said of Giotto's Campanile that it ought to be 
kept in a glass case. 



THE LUCKLESS IPPOLITO 65 

benefits in which the humiliation of Florence and the ex- 
altation of Alessandro came first. Florence, having taken 
sides with Francis, found herself in any case very badly 
left, with the result that at the end of 1529 Charles V's 
army, with the papal forces to assist, laid siege to her. 
The siege lasted for ten months, in which the city was 
most ably defended by Ferrucci, that gallant soldier whose 
portrait by Piero di Cosimo is in our National Gallery — 
No. 895-, — and then came a decisive battle in which the 
Emperor and Pope were conquerors, a thousand brave 
Florentines were put to death and others were imprisoned. 

Alessandro de' Medici arrived at the Medici palace in 
1531, and in 1532 the glorious Florentine Republic of so 
many years growth, for the establishment of which so much 
good blood had been spilt, was declared to be at an end. 
Alessandro being proclaimed Duke, his first act was to 
order the demolition of the great bell of the Signoria which 
had so often called the citizens to arms or meetings of 
independence. 

Meanwhile Ippolito, the natural son of Giuliano, Duke 
of Nemours, and therefore the rightful heir, after having 
been sent on various missions by Clement VII, to keep him 
out of the way, settled at Bologna and took to poetry. 
He was a kindly, melancholy man with a deep sense of 
human injustice, and in 1535, when, after Clement VII's very 
welcome demise, the Florentine exiles who either had been 
banished from Florence by Alessandro or had left of their 
own volition rather than live in the city under such a 
contemptible ruler, sent an embassy to the Emperor 
Charles V to help them against this new tyrant, Ippolito 
headed it ; but Alessandro prudently arranged for his as- 
sassination en route. 

It is unlikely, however, that the Emperor would have 



66 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

done anything, for in the following year he allowed his 
daughter Margaret to become Alessandro's wife. That 
was in 1536. In January, 1537, Lorenzino de' Medici, a 
cousin, one of the younger branch of the family, assuming 
the mantle of Brutus, or liberator, stabbed Alessandro to 
death while he was keeping an assignation in the house that 
then adjoined this palace. Thus died, at the age of twenty- 
six, one of the most worthless of men, and, although illegiti- 
mate, the last of the direct line of Cosimo de' Medici, the 
Father of his Country, to govern Florence. 

The next ruler came from the younger branch, to which 
we now turn. Old Giovanni di Bicci had two sons, Cosimo 
and Lorenzo. Lorenzo's son, Pier Francesco de' Medici, 
had a son Giovanni de' Medici. This Giovanni, who 
married Caterina Sforza of Milan, had also a son named 
Giovanni, born in 1498, and it was he who was the rightful 
heir when Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, died in 1519. He was 
connected with both sides of the family, for his father, as 
I have said, was the great grandson of the first Medici on 
our list, and his wife was Maria Salviati, daughter of Lu- 
crezia de' Medici — herself a daughter of Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent — and Jacopo Salviati, a wealthy Florentine. 
When, however, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, died in 1519, 
Giovanni was a young man of twenty-one with an absorb- 
ing passion for fighting, which Clement VII (then Giulio) 
was only too keen to foster, since he wished him out of the 
way in order that his own projects for the ultimate advance- 
ment of the base-born Alessandro, and meanwhile of the 
catspaw, the base-born Ippolito, might be furthered. 
Giovanni had already done some good service in the field, 
was becoming famous as the head of his company of Black 
Bands, and was known as Giovanni delie Bande Nere ; and 
his marriage to his cousin Maria Salviati and the birth of 



A DRAMATIC CHANGE 67 

his only son Cosimo in 1519 made no difference to his de- 
light in warfare. He was happy only when in the field of 
battle, and the struggle between Francis and Charles gave 
him ample opportunities, fighting on the side of Charles and 
the Pope and doing many brave and dashing things. He 
died at an early age, only twenty-eight, in 1526, the idol of 
his men, leaving a widow and child in poverty. 

Almost immediately afterwards came the third banish- 
ment of the Medici family from Florence. Giovanni's 
widow and their son Cosimo got along as best they could 
until the murder of Alessandro in 1537, when Cosimo was 
nearing eighteen. He was a quiet, reserved youth, who had 
apparently taken but little interest in public affairs, and had 
spent his time in the country with his mother, chiefly in 
field sports. But no sooner was Alessandro dead, and his 
slayer Lorenzino had escaped, than Cosimo approached the 
Florentine council and claimed to be appointed to his 
rightful place as head of the State, and this claim he put, 
or suggested, with so much humility that his wish was 
granted. Instantly one of the most remarkable transitions 
in history occurred : the youth grew up almost in a day 
and at once began to exert unsuspected reserves of power 
and authority. In despair a number of the chief Floren- 
tines made an effort to depose him, and a battle was 
fought at Montemurlo, a few miles from Florence, be- 
tween Cosimo's troops, fortified by some French allies, 
and the insurgents. That was in 1537; the victory 
fell to Cosimo ; and his long and remarkable reign began 
with the imprisonment and execution of the chief rebels. 

Although Cosimo made so bloody a beginning he was 
the first imaginative and thoughtful administrator that 
Florence had had since Lorenzo the Magnificent. He set 
himself grimly to build upon the ruins which the past forty 



68 THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

and more years had produced ; and by the end of his reign 
he had worked wonders. As first he lived in the Medici 
palace, but after marrying a wealthy wife, Eleanora of 
Toledo, he transferred his home to the Signoria, now called 
the Palazzo Vecchio, as a safer spot, and established a 
bodyguard of Swiss lancers in Orcagna's loggia, close by. 1 
Later he bought the unfinished Pitti palace with his wife's 
money, finished it, and moved there. Meanwhile he was 
strengthening his position in every way by alliances and 
treaties, and also by the convenient murder of Lorenzino, 
the Brutus who had rid Florence of Alessandro ten years 
earlier, and whose presence in the flesh could not but be a 
cause of anxiety since Lorenzino derived from an elder 
son of the Medici, and Cosimo from a younger. In 1555 
the ancient republic of Siena fell to Cosimo's troops after 
a cruel and barbarous siege and was thereafter merged in 
Tuscany, and in 1570 Cosimo assumed the title of Cosimo 
I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was crowned at Rome. 

Whether or not the common accusation against the Medici 
as a family, that they had but one motive — mercenary 
ambition and self-aggrandizement — is true, the fact remains 
that the crown did not reach their brows until one hundred 
and seventy years from the first appearance of old Giovanni 
di Bicci in Florentine affairs. The statue of Cosimo I in 
the Piazza della Signoria has a bas-relief of his coronation. 
He was then fifty-one ; he lived but four more years, and 
when he died he left a dukedom flourishing in every way : 
rich, powerful, busy, and enlightened. He had developed 
and encouraged the arts, capriciously, as Cellini's "Auto- 
biography" tells us, but genuinely too, as we can see at 
the Uffizi and the Pitti. The arts, however, were not what 
they had been, for the great period had passed and Florence 
1 Hence its new name : Loggia de' Lanzi. 



AFTER THE MEDICI 69 

was in the trough of the wave. Yet Cosimo found the best 
men he could — Cellini, Bronzino, and Vasari — and kept 
them busy. But his greatest achievement as a connoisseur 
was his interest in Etruscan remains and the excavations at 
Arezzo and elsewhere which yielded the priceless relics now 
at the Archaeological Museum. 

With Cosimo I this swift review of the Medici family 
ends. The rest have little interest for the visitor to Flor- 
ence to-day, for whom Cellini's Perseus, made to Cosimo's 
order, is the last great artistic achievement in the city in 
point of time. But I may say that Cosimo I's direct de- 
scendants occupied the throne (as it had now become) until 
the death of Gian Gastone, son of Cosimo III, who died in 
1737. Tuscany passed to Austria until 1801. In 1807 it 
became French, and in 1814 Austrian again. In 1860 
it was merged in the Kingdom of Italy under the rule of 
the monarch who has given his name to the great new 
Piazza, — Vittorio Emmanuele. 

After Gian Gastone's death one other Medici remained 
alive : Anna Maria Ludovica, daughter of Cosimo III. 
Born in 1667, she married the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, 
and survived until 1743. It was she who left to the city 
the priceless Medici collections, as I have stated in chapter 
VIII. The earlier and greatest of the Medici are buried 
in the church of S. Lorenzo or in Michelangelo's sacristy ; 
the later Medici, beginning with Giovanni delle Bande 
Nere and his wife, and their son Cosimo I, are in the gor- 
geous mausoleum that adjoins S. Lorenzo and is still being 
enriched with precious marbles. 

Such is an outline of the history of this wonderful family, 
and we leave their ancient home, built by the greatest and 
wisest of them, with mixed feelings of admiration and pity. 
They were seldom lovable; they were often despicable; 



ft) THE RICCARDI PALACE AND THE MEDICI 

but where they were great they were very great indeed. A 
Latin inscription in the courtyard reminds the traveller 
of the distinction which the house possesses, calling it the 
home not only of princes but of knowledge herself and a 
treasury of the arts. But Florence, although it bought 
the palace from the Riccardi family a century and more 
ago, has never cared to give it back its rightful name. 



CHAPTER VI 

S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

A forlorn fagade — The church of the Medici — Cosimo's parents' tomb 
— Donatello's cantoria and pulpits — Brunelleschi's sacristy — Dona- 
tello again — The palace of the dead Grand Dukes — Costly intarsia — 
Michelangelo's sacristy — A weary Titan's life — The victim of 
capricious pontiffs — The Medici tombs — Mementi mori — The Casa 
Buonarroti — Brunelleschi's cloisters — A model library. 

ARCHITECTURALLY S. Lorenzo does not attract as 
S. Croce and S. Maria Novella do ; but certain treas- 
ures of sculpture make it unique. Yet it is a cool scene 
of noble grey arches, and the ceiling is very happily picked 
out with gold and colour. Savonarola preached some of 
his most important sermons here ; here Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent was married. 

The facade has never yet been finished : it is just ragged 
brickwork waiting for its marble, and likely to wait, al- 
though such expenditure on marble is going on within 
a few yards of it as makes one gasp. Not very far away, 
in the Via Ghibellina, is a house which contains some 
rough plans by a master hand for this fagade, drawn some 
four hundred years ago — the hand of none other than 
Michelangelo, whose scheme was to make it not only a won- 
der of architecture but a wonder also of statuary, the fagade 
having many niches, each to be filled with a sacred figure. 
But Michelangelo always dreamed on a scale utterly dis- 

71 



n S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

proportionate to the foolish little span of life allotted to 
us, and the S. Lorenzo facade was never even begun. 

The piazza which these untidy bricks overlook is now 
given up to stalls and is the centre of the cheap clothing 
district. Looking diagonally across it from the church one 
sees the great walls of the courtyard of what is now the 
Riccardi palace, but was in the great days the Medici 
palace ; and at the corner, facing the Borgo S. Lorenzo, is 
Giovanni delle Bande Nere, in stone, by the impossible 
Bandinelli, looking at least twenty years older than he ever 
lived to be. 

S. Lorenzo was a very old church in the time of Giovanni 
de' Medici, the first great man of the family, and had 
already been restored once, in the eleventh century, but it 
was his favourite church, chosen by him for his own resting- 
place, and he spent great sums in improving it. All this 
with the assistance of Brunelleschi, who is responsible 
for the interior as we now see it, and would, had .he lived, 
have completed the fagade. After Giovanni came Cosimo, 
who also devoted great sums to the glory of this church, 
not only assisting Brunelleschi with his work but inducing 
Donatello to lavish his genius upon it ; and the church was 
thus established as the family vault of the Medici race. 
Giovanni lies here ; Cosimo lies here ; and Piero ; while 
Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano and certain descen- 
dants were buried in the Michelangelo sacristy, and all the 
Grand Dukes in the ostentatious chapel behind the altar. 

Cosimo is buried beneath the floor in front of the high 
altar, in obedience to his wish, and by the special permis- 
sion of the Roman Church; and in the same vault lies 
Donatello. Cosimo, who was buried with all simplicity on 
August 22nd, 1464, in his last illness recommended Dona- 
tello, who was then seventy-eight, to his son Piero. The old 




CHRIST AND S. THOMAS 

BY VEK.ROCCHIO 

{In a niche by Donatello and Michelozzo in the wall of Or San Miche 



THE BRONZE PULPITS 73 

sculptor survived his illustrious patron and friend only two 
and a half years, declining gently into the grave, and his 
body was brought here in December, 1466. A monument 
to his memory was erected in the church in 1896. Piero 
(the Gouty), who survived until 1469, lies close by, his 
bronze monument, with that of his brother, being that 
between the sacristy and the adjoining chapel, in an im- 
posing porphyry and bronze casket, the work of Verrocchio, 
one of the richest and most impressive of all the memorial 
sculptures of the Renaissance. The marble pediment is 
supported by four tortoises, such as support the monoliths 
in the Piazza S. Maria Novella. The iron rope work that 
divides the sacristy from the chapel is a marvel of work- 
manship. 

But we go too fast : the church before the sacristy, and 
the glories of the church are Donatello's. We have seen 
his cantoria in the Museum of the Cathedral. Here is 
another, not so riotous and jocund in spirit, but in its own 
way hardly less satisfying. The Museum cantoria has the 
wonderful frieze of dancing figures ; this is an exercise in 
marble intarsia. It has the same row of pillars with little 
specks of mosaic gold ; but its beauty is that of delicate 
proportions and soft tones. The cantoria is in the left 
aisle, in its original place ; the two bronze pulpits are in the 
nave. These have a double interest as being not only 
Donatello's work but his latest work. They were incom- 
plete at his death, and were finished by his pupil Bertoldo 
(1410-1491), and since, as we shall see, Bertoldo became 
the master of Michelangelo, when he was a lad of fifteen 
and Bertoldo an old man of eighty, these pupils may be 
said to form a link between the two great S. Lorenzo 
sculptors. How fine and free and spirited Bertoldo could 
be, alone, we shall see at the Bargello. The S. Lorenzo 



74 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

pulpits are very difficult to study: nothing wants a 
stronger light than a bronze relief, and in Florence students 
of bronze reliefs are accustomed to it, since the most 
famous of all — the Ghiberti doors — are in the open air. 
Only in course of time can one discern the scenes here. 
The left pulpit is the finer, for it contains the "Crucifixion" 
and the "Deposition," which to me form the most striking 
of the panels. 

The other piece of sculpture in the church itself is a 
ciborium by Desiderio da Settignano, in the chapel at the 
end of the right transept — an exquisite work by this rare 
and playful and distinguished hand. It is fitting that 
Desiderio should be here, for he was Donatello's favourite 
pupil. The S. Lorenzo ciborium is wholly charming, al- 
though there is a " Deposition " upon it ; the little Boy is 
adorable; but one sees it with the greatest difficulty owing 
to the crowded state of the altar and the dim light. The 
altar picture in the Martelli chapel, where the sympathetic 
Donatello monument (in the same medium as his " An- 
nunciation" at S. Croce) is found — on the way to the 
Library — is by Lippo Lippi, and is notable for the pretty 
Virgin receiving the angel's news. There is nice colour 
in the predella. 

As I have said in the first chapter, we are too prone to 
ignore the architect. We look at the jewels and forget 
the casket. Brunelleschi is a far greater maker of Florence 
than either Donatello or Michelangelo; but one thinks 
of him rather as an abstraction than a man or forgets 
him altogether. Yet the S. Lorenzo sacristy is one of the 
few perfect things in the world. What most people, how- 
ever, remember is its tombs, its doors, and its reliefs ; the 
proportions escape them. I think its shallow easy dome 
beyond description beautiful. Brunelleschi, who had an 



DONATELLO'S SACRISTY 75 

investigating genius, himself painted the quaint constella- 
tions in the ceiling over the altar. At the Pazzi chapel 
we shall find similar architecture; but there extraneous 
colour was allowed to come in. Here such reliefs as were 
admitted are white too. 

The tomb under the great marble and porphyry table 
in the centre is that of Giovanni di Bicci, the father, and 
Piccarda, the mother, of Cosimo Pater, and is usually attri- 
buted to Buggiano, the adopted son of Brunelleschi, but 
other authorities give it either to Donatello alone or to 
Donatello with Michelozzo : both from the evidence of 
the design and because it is unlikely that Cosimo would 
ask any one else than one of these two friends of his to 
carry out a commission so near his heart. The table is part 
of the scheme and not a chance covering. I think the 
porphyry centre ought to be movable, so that the beautiful 
flying figures on the sarcophagus could be seen. But Dona- 
tello's most striking achievement here is the bronze doors, 
which are at once so simple and so strong and so surprising 
by the activity of the virile and spirited holy men, all con- 
verting each other, thereon depicted. These doors could 
not well be more different from Ghiberti's, in the casting 
of which Donatello assisted; those in such high relief, 
these so low; those so fluid and placid, and these so 
vigorous. 

Donatello presides over this room (under Brunelleschi). 
The vivacious, speaking terra-cotta bust of the young S. 
Lorenzo on the altar is his; the altar railing is probably 
his ; the frieze of terra-cotta cherubs may be his ; the four 
low reliefs in the spandrels, which it is so difficult to dis- 
cern but which photographs prove to be wonderful scenes 
in the life of S. John the Evangelist — so like, as one peers 
up at them, plastic Piranesis, with their fine masonry — are 



76 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

his. The other reliefs are Donatello's too ; but the lavabo 
in the inner sacristy is Verrocchio's, and Verrocchio's tomb 
of Piero can never be overlooked even amid such a wealth 
of the greater master's work. 

From this fascinating room — fascinating both in itself 
and in its possessions — we pass, after distributing the 
necessary largesse to the sacristan, to a turnstile which ad- 
mits, on payment of a lira, to the Chapel of the Princes 
and to Michelangelo's sacristy. Here is contrast, indeed : 
the sacristy, austere and classic, and the chapel a very 
exhibition building of floridity and coloured ornateness, 
dating from the seventeenth century and not finished yet. 
In paying the necessary fee to see these buildings one 
thinks again what the feelings of Giovanni and Cosimo 
and Lorenzo the Magnificent, and even of Cosimo I, all 
such generous patrons of Florence, would be, if they could 
see the present feverish collection of lire in their beautiful 
city. 

Of the Chapel of the Princes I have little to say. To 
pass from Michelangelo's sacristy to this is an error; 
see it, if see it you must, first. While the fagade of S. 
Lorenzo is still neglected and the cornice of Brunelleschi's 
dome is still unfinished, this lapidary's show-room is being 
completed at a cost of millions of lire. Ever since 1888 
has the floor been in progress, and there are many years' 
work yet. An enthusiastic custodian gave me a list of the 
stones which were used in the designs of the coats of arms 
of Tuscan cities, of which that of Fiesole is the most attrac- 
tive: — Sicily jasper, French jasper, Tuscany jasper, petri- 
fied wood, white and yellow, Corsican granite, Corsican 
jasper, Oriental alabaster, French marble, lapis lazuli, verde 
antico, African marble, Siena marble, Carrara marble, 
rose agate, mother of pearl, and coral. The names of the 



MICHELANGELO'S SACRISTY 77 

Medici are in porphyry and ivory. It is all very marvellous 
and occasionally beautiful; but . . . 

This pretentious building was designed by a natural son 
of Cosimo I in 1604, and was begun as the state mausoleum 
of the Grand Dukes ; and all lie here. All the Grand 
Duchesses too, save Bianca Capella, wife of Francis I, who 
was buried none knows where. It is strange to realize as 
one stands here that this pavement covers all those ladies, 
buried in their wonderful clothes. We shall see Eleanor 
of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, in Bronzino's famous picture 
at the Uffizi, in an amazing brocaded dress : it is that dress 
in which she reposes beneath us ! They had their jewels 
too, and each Grand Duke his crown and sceptre ; but 
these, with one or two exceptions, were stolen during the 
French occupation of Tuscany, 1801-1814. Only two of 
the Grand Dukes have their statues — Ferdinand I and 
Cosimo II — and the Medici no longer exist in the Floren- 
tine memory ; and yet the quiet brick floor is having all 
this money squandered on it to superimpose costly marbles 
which cannot matter to anybody. 

Michelangelo's chapel, called the New Sacristy, was 
begun for Leo X and finished for Giulio de' Medici, illegiti- 
mate son of the murdered Giuliano and afterwards Pope 
Clement VII. Brunelleschi's design for the Old Sacristy 
was followed but made more severe. This, one would feel 
to be the very home of dead princes even if there were no 
statues. The only colours are the white of the walls and 
the brown of the pillars and windows; the dome was to 
have been painted, but it fortunately escaped. 

The contrast between Michelangelo's dome and Brunel- 
leschi's is complete — Brunelleschi's so suave and gentle in 
its rise, with its grey lines to help the eye, and this soaring 
so boldly to its lantern, with its rigid device of dwin- 



78 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

dling squares. The odd thing is that with these two domes 
to teach him better the designer of the Chapel of the 
Princes should have indulged in such floridity. 

Such is the force of the architecture in the sacristy that 
one is profoundly conscious of being in melancholy's most 
perfect home; and the building is so much a part of 
Michelangelo's life and it contains such marvels from his 
hand that I choose it as a place to tell his story. Michel- 
angelo Buonarroti was born on March 6th, 1475, at Caprese, 
of which town his father was Podesta. At that time 
Brunelleschi had been dead twenty-nine years, Fra Angelico 
twenty years, Donatello nine years, Leonardo da Vinci 
was twenty-three years old, and Raphael was not yet born. 
Lorenzo the Magnificent had been on what was virtually 
the throne of Florence since 1469 and was a young man of 
twenty-six. For foster-mother the child had the wife of a 
stone-mason at Settignano, whither the family soon moved, 
and Michelangelo used to say that it was with her milk 
that he imbibed the stone-cutting art. It was from the air 
too, for Settignano's principal industry was sculpture. 
The village being only three miles from Florence, from it 
the boy could see the city much as we see it now — its 
Duomo, its campanile, with the same attendant spires. He 
was sent to Florence to school and intended for either the 
wool or silk trade, as so many Florentines were ; but dis- 
playing artistic ability, he induced his father to apprentice 
him, at the age of thirteen, to a famous goldsmith and 
painter of Florence who had a busy atelier — no other than 
Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was then a man of thirty- 
nine. 

Michelangelo remained with him for three years, and 
although his power and imagination were already greater 
then his master's, he learned much, and would never have 



A GARDEN OF SCULPTURE 79 

made his Sistine Chapel frescoes with the ease he did but 
for this early grounding. For Ghirlandaio, although not of 
the first rank of painters in genius, was pre-eminently there 
in thoroughness, while he was good for the boy too in 
spirit, having a large way with him. The first work of 
Ghirlandaio which the boy saw in the making was the 
beautiful "Adoration of the Magi," in the Church of the 
Spedale degli Innocenti, completed in 1488, and the S. 
Maria Novella frescoes, and it is reasonable to suppose that 
he helped with the frescoes in colour grinding, even if he 
did not, as some have said, paint with his own hand the 
beggar sitting on the steps in the scene representing the 
" Presentation of the Virgin." That he was already clever 
with his pencil we know, for he had made some caricatures 
and corrected a drawing or two. 

The three years with Ghirlandaio were reduced eventu- 
ally to one, the boy having the good fortune to be chosen 
as one of enough promise to be worth instruction, both by 
precept and example, in the famous Medici garden. Here 
he was more at home than in a painting room, for plastic 
art was his passion, and not only had Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
cent gathered together there many of those masterpieces of 
ancient sculpture which we shall see at the Uffizi, but 
Bertoldo, the aged head of this informal school, was the 
possessor of a private collection of Donatellos and other 
Renaissance work of extraordinary beauty and worth. 
Donatello's influence on the boy held long enough for him 
to make the low relief of the Madonna, much in his style, 
which is now preserved in the Casa Buonarroti, while the 
plaque of the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae which 
is also there shows Bertoldo's influence. 

The boy's first encounter with Lorenzo occurred while 
he was modelling the head of an aged faun. His mag- 



80 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

nificent patron stopped to watch him, pointing out that so 
old a creature would probaby not have such a fine set of 
teeth, and Michelangelo, taking the hint, in a moment had 
not only knocked out a tooth or two but — and here his 
observation told — hollowed the gums and cheeks a little in 
sympathy. Lorenzo was so pleased with his quickness and 
skill that he received him into his house as the companion 
of his three sons : of Piero, who was so soon and so disas- 
trously to succeed his father, but was now a high-spirited 
youth ; of Giovanni, who, as Pope Leo X many years after, 
was to give Michelangelo the commission for this very 
sacristy ; and of Giuliano, who lies beneath one of the 
tombs. As their companion he enjoyed the advantage of 
sharing their lessons under Poliziano, the poet, and of hear- 
ing the conversation of Pico della Mirandola, who was 
usually with Lorenzo; and to these early fastidious and 
intellectual surroundings the artist owed much. 

That he read much, we know, the Bible and Dante being 
constant companions ; and we know also that in addition 
to modelling and copying under Bertoldo, he was assiduous 
in studying Masaccio's frescoes at the church of the Car- 
mine across the river, which had become a school of 
painting. It was there that his fellow-pupil, Pietro Tor- 
rigiano, who was always his enemy and a bully, broke 
his nose with one blow and flew to Rome from the rage of 
Lorenzo. 

It was when Michelangelo was seventeen that Lorenzo 
died, at the early age of forty-two, and although the gar- 
den still existed and the Medici palace was still open to 
the youth, the spirit had passed. Piero, who succeeded his 
father, had none of his ability or sagacity, and in two years 
was a refugee from the city, while the treasures of the 
garden were disposed by auction, and Michelangelo, too 




PUTTO WITH DOLPHIN 

FROM THE BRONZE BY VERROCCHIO IN THE PALAZZO VECCEIO 



DAVID AND THE CARTOON 81 

conspicuous as a Medici protege to be safe, hurried away 
to Bologna. He was now nineteen. 

Of his travels I say nothing here, for we must keep to 
Florence, whither he thought it safe to return in 1495. 
The city was now governed by the Great Council and the 
Medici banished. Michelangelo remained only a brief 
time and then went to Rome, where he made his first 
Pieta, at which he was working during the trial and exe- 
cution of Savonarola, whom he admired and reverenced, 
and where he remained until 1501, when, aged twenty-six, 
he returned to Florence to do some of his most famous 
work. The Medici were still in exile. 

It was in August, 1501, that the authorities of the 
cathedral asked Michelangelo to do what he could with 
a great block of marble on their hands, from which he 
carved that statue of David of which I tell the story in 
chapter XVI. This established his pre-eminence as a 
sculptor. Other commissions for statues poured in, and 
in 1504 he was invited to design a cartoon for the Palazzo 
Vecchio, to accompany one by Leonardo, and a studio was 
given him in the Via Guelf a for the purpose. This cartoon, 
when finished, so far established him also as the greatest 
of painters that the Masaccios in the Carmine were deserted 
by young artists in order that this might be studied in- 
stead. The cartoon, as I relate in the chapter on the 
Palazzo Vecchio, no longer exists. 

The next year, 1505, Michelangelo, nearing his thirtieth 
birthday, returned to Rome and entered upon the second 
and tragic period of his life, for he arrived there only to 
receive the order for the Julius tomb which poisoned his 
remaining years, and of which more is said in the chapter on 
the Accademia, where we see so many vestiges of it both 
in marble and plaster. But I might remark here that this 

Q 



82 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

vain and capricious pontiff whose pride and indecision 
robbed the world of no one can ever say what glorious 
work from Michelangelo's hand, is the benevolent-looking 
old man whose portrait by Raphael is in the Pitti and 
Uffizi in colour, in the Corsini Palace in charcoal, and 
again in our own National Gallery in colour. 

Of Michelangelo at Rome and Carrara, whither he 
went to superintend in person the quarrying of the marble 
that was to be transferred to life and where he had endless 
vexations and mortifications, I say nothing. Enough that 
the election of his boy friend Giovanni de' Medici as Pope 
Leo X in 1513 brought him again to Florence, the Pope 
having a strong wish that Michelangelo should complete 
the facade of the Medici family church, S. Lorenzo, where 
we now are. As we know, the scheme was not carried out, 
but in 1520 the Pope substituted another and more attrac- 
tive one : namely, a chapel to contain the tombs not 
only of his father the Magnificent, and his uncle, who had 
been murdered in the Duomo many years before, but also 
his nephew Piero de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, who had 
just died, in 1519, and his younger brother (and Michel- 
angelo's early playmate) Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of 
Nemours, who had died in 1516. These were not Medici 
of the highest class, but family pride was strong. It is, 
however, odd that no memorial of Piero di Lorenzo de' 
Medici, who had been drowned at the age of twenty-two 
in 1503, was required ; perhaps it may have been that since 
it was Piero's folly that had brought the Medici into such 
disgrace in 1494, the less thought of him the better. 

Michelangelo took fire at once, and again hastened 
to Carrara to arrange for marble to be sent to his studio 
in the Via Mozzi, now the Via S. Zenobi; while the 
building stone was brought from Fiesole. Leo X lived 



REBUKING A POPE 83 

only to know that the great man had begun, the new 
patron being Giulio de' Medici, natural son of the mur- 
dered Giuliano, now a cardinal, and soon, in 1523, to be- 
come Pope Clement VII. This Pope showed deep interest 
in the project, but wished not only to add tombs of him- 
self and Pope Leo X, but also to build a library for the 
Laurentian collection, which Michelangelo must design. 
A little later he had decided that he would prefer to lie 
in the choir of the church, and Leo X with him, and 
instead therefore of tombs Michelangelo might merely 
make a colossal statue of him to stand in the piazza before 
the church. The sculptor's temper had not been improved 
by his many years' experience of papal caprice, and he replied 
to this suggestion with a letter unique even in the annals 
of infuriated artists. Let the statue be made, of course, 
he said, but let it be useful as well as ornamental : the 
lower portion to be also a barber's shop, and the head, 
since it would be empty, a greengrocer's. The Pope 
allowed himself to be rebuked, and abandoned the statue, 
writing a mild and even pathetic reply. 

Until 1527 Michelangelo worked away at the building 
and the tombs, always secretly, behind impenetrable bar- 
riers ; and then came the troubles which led to the siege 
of Florence, following upon the banishment of Alessandro, 
Duke of Urbino, natural son of the very Lorenzo whom 
the sculptor was to dignify for all time. By the Emperor 
Charles V and Pope Clement VII the city was attacked, and 
Michelangelo was called away from Clement's sacristy to 
fortify Florence against Clement's soldiers. Part of his 
ramparts at S. Miniato still remain, and he strengthened 
all the gates ; but, feeling himself slighted and hating the 
whole affair, he suddenly disappeared. One story is that 
he hid in the church tower of S. Niccolo, below what is 



84 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

now the Piazzale dedicated to his memory. Wherever he 
was, he was proclaimed an outlaw, and then, on Florence 
finding that she could not do without him, was pardoned, 
and so returned, the city meanwhile having surrendered 
and the Medici again being restored to power. 

The Pope showed either fine magnanimity or com- 
pounded with facts in the interest of the sacristy; for 
he encouraged Michelangelo to proceed, and the pacific 
work was taken up once more after the martial interreg- 
num, and in a desultory way he was busy at it, always 
secretly and moodily, until 1533, when he tired com- 
pletely and never touched it again. A year later Clem- 
ent VII died, having seen only drawings of the tombs, if 
those. 

But though left unfinished, the sacristy is wholly satis- 
fying — more indeed than satisfying, conquering. What- 
ever help Michelangelo may have had from his assistants, 
it is known that the symbolical figures on the tombs and 
the two seated Medici are from his hand. Of the two 
finished or practically finished tombs — to my mind as 
finished as they should be — that of Lorenzo is the finer. 
The presentment of Lorenzo in armour brooding and plan- 
ning is more splendid than that of Giuliano ; while the old 
man, whose head anticipates everything that is considered 
most original in Rodin's work, is among the best of Michel- 
angelo's statuary. Much speculation has been indulged in 
as to the meaning of the symbolism of these tombs, and 
having no theory of my own to offer, I am glad to borrow 
Mr. Gerald S. Davies' summary from his monograph on 
Michelangelo. The figure of Giuliano typifies energy 
and leadership in repose; while the man on his tomb 
typifies Day and the woman Night, or the man Action and 
the woman the sleep and rest that produce Action. The 



THE MEDICI TOMBS 85 

figure of Lorenzo typifies Contemplation, the woman 
Dawn, and the man Twilight, the states which lie between 
light and darkness, action and rest. What Michelangelo 
— who owed nothing to any Medici save only Lorenzo the 
Magnificent and had seen the best years of his life frittered 
away in the service of them and other proud princes — may 
also have intended we shall never know ; but he was a sat- 
urnine man with a long memory, and he might easily have 
made the tombs a vehicle for criticism. One would not 
have another touch of the chisel on either of the symbolical 
male figures. 

Although a tomb to Lorenzo the Magnificent by Michel- 
angelo would surely have been a wonderful thing, there is 
something startling and arresting in the circumstance that 
he has none at all from any hand, but lies here unrecorded. 
His grandfather, in the church itself, rests beneath a plain 
slab, which aimed so consciously at modesty as thereby to 
achieve special distinction ; Lorenzo, leaving no such direc- 
tions, has nothing, while in the same room are monuments 
to two commonplace descendants to thrill the soul. The 
disparity is in itself monumental. That Michelangelo's 
Madonna and Child are on the slab which covers the dust of 
Lorenzo and his brother is a chance. The saints on either 
side are S. Cosimo and S. Damian, the patron saints of old 
Cosimo de' Medici, and are by Michelangelo's assistants. 
The Madonna was intended for the altar of the sacristy. 
Into this work the sculptor put much of his melancholy, 
and, one feels, disappointment. The face of the Madonna 
is already sad and hopeless ; but the Child is perhaps the 
most splendid and determined of any in all Renaissance 
sculpture. He may, if we like, symbolize the new genera- 
tion that is always deriving sustenance from the old, with- 
out care or thought of what the old has to suffer; he 



86 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

crushes his head against his mother's breast in a very 
passion of vigorous dependence. 1 

Whatever was originally intended, it is certain that in 
Michelangelo's sacristy disillusionment reigns as well as 
death. But how beautiful it is ! 

In a little room leading from the sacristy I was shown 
by a smiling custodian Lorenzo the Magnificent's coffin 
crumbling away, and photographs of the skulls of the two 
brothers : Giuliano's with one of Francesco de' Pazzi's 
dagger wounds in it, and Lorenzo's, ghastly in its decay. 
I gave the man half a lira. 

While he was working on the tombs Michelangelo had 
undertaken now and then a small commission, and to this 
period belongs the David which we shall see in the little 
room on the ground floor of the Bargello. In 1534, when 
he finally abandoned the sacristy, and, leaving Florence 
for ever, settled in Rome, the Laurentian library was only 
begun, and he had little interest in it. He never saw it 
again. At Rome his time was fully occupied in painting 
the "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel, and in various 
architectural works. But Florence at any rate has two 
marble masterpieces that belong to the later period — 
the Brutus in the Bargello and the Pieta in the Duomo, 
which we have seen — that poignantly impressive rendering 
of the entombment upon which the old man was at work 
when he died, and which he meant for his own grave. 

His death came in 1564, on February 23rd, when he was 
nearly eighty-nine, and his body was brought to Florence 
and buried amid universal grief in S. Croce, where it has 
a florid monument. 

1 In the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington are casts of 
the two Medici on the tombs and also this Madonna and Child. They 
are in the great gallery of the casts, together with the great David, two 
of the Julian tomb prisoners, the Bargello tondo and the Brutus. 




MADONNA ADORING 

FROM THE PAINTING ASCRIBED TO FILIPPINO LIPPI IN THE TJFFIZI 



THE CASA BUONARROTI 87 

Since we are considering the life of Michelangelo, I might 
perhaps say here a few words about his house, which is 
only a few minutes' distant — at No. 64 Via Ghibellina — 
where certain early works and personal relics are preserved. 
Michelangelo gave the house to his nephew Leonardo ; it 
was decorated early in the seventeenth century with scenes 
in the life of the master, and finally bequeathed to the 
city as a heritage in 1858. It is perhaps the best example 
of the rapacity of the Florentines ; for notwithstanding 
that it was left freely in this way a lira is charged for 
admission. The house contains more collateral curiosities, 
as they might be called, than those in the direct line ; but 
there are architectural drawings from the wonderful hand, 
colour drawings of a Madonna, a few studies, and two early 
pieces of sculpture — the battle of the Lapithae and Cen- 
taurs, a relief marked by tremendous vigour and full of 
movement, and a Madonna and Child, also in relief, with 
many marks of greatness upon it. In a recess in Room IV 
are some personal relics of the artist, which his great 
nephew, the poet, who was named after him, began to 
collect early in the seventeenth century. As a whole the 
house is disappointing. 

Upstairs have been arranged a quantity of prints and 
drawings illustrating the history of Florence. 

The S. Lorenzo cloisters may be entered either from 
a side door in the church close to the Old Sacristy or 
from the piazza. Although an official in uniform keeps 
the piazza door, they are free. Brunelleschi is again 
the architect, and from the loggia at the entrance to 
the library you see most acceptably the whole of his 
cathedral dome and half of Giotto's tower. It is im- 
possible for Florentine cloisters — or indeed any cloisters — 
not to have a certain beauty, and these are unusually 



88 S. LORENZO AND MICHELANGELO 

charming and light, seen both from the loggia and the 
ground. 

Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana, which leads from 
them, is one of the most perfect of sombre buildings, the 
very home of well-ordered scholarship. The staircase is 
impressive, although perhaps a little too severe ; the long 
room could not be more satisfying to the eye. Michelangelo 
died before it was finished, but it is his in design, even to 
the ceiling and cases for MSS. in which the library is so 
rich, and the rich red wood ceiling. Vasari, Michelangelo's 
pupil and friend and the biographer to whom we are so 
much indebted, carried on the work. His scheme of 
windows has been upset on the side opposite the cloisters 
by the recent addition of a rotunda leading from the main 
room. If ever rectangular windows were more exquisitely 
and nobly proportioned I should like to see them. The 
library is free for students, and the attendants are very 
good in calling stray visitors' attention to illuminated 
missals, old MSS., early books and so forth. One of 
Galileo's fingers, stolen from his body, used to be kept 
here, in a glass case, and may be here still ; but I did not 
see it. I saw, however, the portraits, in an old volume, 
of Petrarch and his Laura. 

This wonderful collection was begun by Cosimo de' 
Medici; others added to it until it became one of the 
most valuable in the world, not, however, without various 
vicissitudes incident to any Florentine institution: while 
one of its most cherished treasures, the Virgil of the fourth 
or fifth century, was even carried to Paris by Napoleon and 
not returned until the great year of restoration, 1816. 
Among the holograph MSS. is Cellini's "Autobiography." 
The library, in time, after being confiscated by the Re- 
public and sold to the monks of S. Marco, again passed 



THE S. LORENZO CATS 89 

into the possession of a Medici, Leo X, son of Lorenzo 
the Magnificent, and then of Clement VII, and he it was 
who commissioned Michelangelo to house it with dignity. 
An old daily custom in the cloisters of S. Lorenzo was 
the feeding of cats ; but it has long since been dropped. If 
you look at Mr. Hewlett's "Earthwork out of Tuscany" 
you will find an entertaining description of what it used 
to be like. 



CHAPTER VII 

OB SAN MICHELE AND THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 

The little Bigallo — The Misericordia — Or San Michele — Andrea Or- 
cagna — The Tabernacle — Old Glass — A company of stone saints — ■ 
Donatello's S. George — Dante conferences — The Guilds of Florence — 
The Palazzo Vecchio — Two Towers — Bandinelli's group — The Marzocco 

— The Piazza della Signoria — Orcagna's Loggia — Cellini and Cosimo 

— The Perseus — Verrocchio's dolphin — The Great Council Hall — Leo- 
nardo da Vinci and Michelangelo's cartoons — Bandinellli's malice — The 
Palazzo Vecchio as a home — Two cells and the bell of independence. 

LET us now proceed along the Via Calzaioli (which 
means street of the stocking-makers) running 
away from the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della 
Signoria. The fascinatingly pretty building at the corner, 
opposite Pisano's Baptistery doors, is the Bigallo, in the 
loggia of which foundling children used to be displayed 
in the hope that passers-by might pity them sufficiently 
to make them presents or even adopt them; but this 
custom continues no longer. The Bigallo was designed, 
it is thought, by Orcagna, and it is worth the minutest 
study. 

The Company of the Bigallo, which is no longer an active 
force, was one of the benevolent societies of old Florence. 
But the greatest of these societies, still busy and merciful, 
is the Misericordia, whose head-quarters are just across the 
Via Calzaioli, in the piazza, facing the campanile, a 
Company of Florentines pledged at a moment's notice, no 

90 




THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 



THE MISERICORDIA 91 

matter on what they may be engaged, to assist in any 
charitable work of necessity. For the most part they 
carry ambulances to the scenes of accident and perform the 
last offices for the dead in the poorer districts. When 
on duty they wear black robes and hoods. Their head- 
quarters comprise a chapel, with an altar by Andrea della 
Robbia, and a statue of the patron saint of the Miseri- 
cordia, S. Sebastian. But their real patron saint is their 
founder, a common porter named Pietro Borsi. In the 
thirteenth century it was the custom for the porters and 
loafers connected with the old market to meet in a shelter 
here and pass the time away as best they could. Borsi, 
joining them, was distressed to find how unprofitable 
were the hours, and he suggested the formation of a society 
to be of some real use, the money to support it to be 
obtained by fines in payment for oaths and blasphemies. 
A litter or two were soon bought and the machinery 
started. The name was the Company of the Brothers of 
Mercy. That was in 1240 to 1250. To-day no Florentine 
is too grand to take his part, and at the head of the porter's 
band of brethren is the King. 

Passing along the Via Calzaioli we come on the right to 
a noble square building with statues in its niches — Or 
San Michele, which stands on the site of the chapel of 
San Michele in Orto. San Michele in Orto, or more prob- 
ably in Horreo (meaning either in the garden or in the 
granary), was once part of a loggia used as a corn market, 
in which was preserved a picture by Ugolino da Siena 
representing the Virgin, and this picture had the power of 
working miracles. Early in the fourteenth century the 
loggia was burned down but the picture was saved (or 
quickly replaced), and a new building on a much larger and 
more splendid scale was made for it, none other than Or 



92 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

San Michele, the chief architect being Taddeo Gaddi, 
Giotto's pupil and later the constructor of the Ponte Vecchio. 
Where the picture then was, I cannot say — whether inside 
the building or out — but the principal use of the building 
was to serve as a granary. x\fter 1348, when Florence was 
visited by that ravaging plague which Boccaccio describes 
in such gruesome detail at the beginning of the "De- 
cameron" and which sent his gay company of ladies and 
gentlemen to the Villa Palmieri to take refuge in story tell- 
ing, and when this sacred picture was more than commonly 
busy and efficacious, it was decided to apply the enormous 
sums of money given to the shrine from gratitude in 
beautifying the church still more, and chiefly in providing a 
casket worthy of holding such a pictorial treasure. Hence 
came about the noble edifice of to-day. 

A man of universal genius was called in to execute the 
tabernacle : Andrea Orcagna, a pupil probably of Andrea 
Pisano, and also much influenced by Giotto, whom though 
he had not known he idolized, and one who, like Michel- 
angelo later, was not only a painter and sculptor but an 
architect and a poet. Orcagna, or, to give him his right 
name, Andrea di Cione, for Orcagna was an abbreviation 
of Arcagnolo, flourished in the middle of the fourteenth 
century. Among his best-known works in painting are 
the Dantesque frescoes in the Strozzi chapel at S. Maria 
Novella, and that terrible allegory of Death and Judgment 
in the Campo Santo at Pisa, in which the gay riding party 
come upon the three open graves. Orcagna put all his 
strength into the tabernacle of Or San Michele, which is 
a most sumptuous, beautiful, and thoughtful shrine, yet 
owing to the darkness of the church almost invisible. 
Guides, it is true, will emerge from the gloom and hold 
lighted tapers to it, but a right conception of it is impos- 



ORCAGNA THE VARIOUS 93 

sible. The famous miraculous picture over the altar is 
notable rather for its properties than for its intrinsic beauty ; 
it is the panels of the altar, which contain Orcagna's most 
exquisite work, representing scenes in the life of the Virgin, 
with emblematical figures interspersed, that one wishes to 
see. Only the back, however, can be seen really well, and 
this only when a door opposite to it — in the Via Calzaioli 
— is opened. It should always be open, with a grille 
across it, that passers-by might have constant sight of this 
almost unknown Florentine treasure. It is in the relief of 
the death of the Virgin on the back that — on the extreme 
right — Orcagna introduced his own portrait. The marble 
employed is of a delicate softness, and Orcagna had 
enough of Giotto's tradition to make the Virgin a reality 
and to interest Her, for example, as a mother in the wash- 
ing of Her Baby, as few painters have done, and in partic- 
ular, as, according to Ruskin, poor Ghirlandaio could not 
do in his fresco of the birth of the Virgin Herself. It 
was Orcagna's habit to sign his sculpture "Andrea di Cione, 
painter," and his paintings "Andrea di Cione, sculptor," 
and thus point his versatility. By this tabernacle, by his 
Pisan fresco, and by the designs of the Loggia de' Lanzi and 
the Bigallo (which are usually given to him), he takes his 
place among the most interesting and various of the fore- 
runners of the Renaissance. 

Within Or San Michele you learn the secret of the 
stoned-up windows which one sees with regret from without. 
Each, or nearly each, has an altar against it. What the old 
glass was like one can divine from the lovely and sombre 
top lights in exquisite patterns that are left ; that on the 
centre of the right wall of the church, as one enters, having 
jewels of green glass as lovely as any I ever saw. But 
blues, purples, and reds predominate. 



94 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

The tabernacle apart, the main appeal of Or San Michele 
is the statuary and stone- work of the exterior; for here 
we find the early masters at their best. The building 
being the head-quarters of the twelve Florentine guilds, 
the statues and decorations were commissioned by them. 
It is as though our City companies should unite in beautify- 
ing the Guildhall. Donatello is the greatest artist here, 
and it was for the Armourers that he made his S. George, 
which stands now, as he carved it in marble, in the Bargello, 
but has a bronze substitute in its original niche, below 
which is a relief of the slaying of the dragon from Dona- 
tello's chisel. ( Of this glorious S. George more will be said 
later. But I may remark now that in its place here it in- 
stantly proves the modernity and realistic vigour of its 
sculptor. Fine though they be, all the other statues of this 
building are conventional ; they carry on a tradition of re- 
ligious sculpture such as Niccolo Pisano respected, many 
years earlier, when he worked at the Pisan pulpit. But 
Donatello's S. George is new and is as beautiful as a Greek 
god, with something of real human life added. 

Donatello (with Michelozzo) also made the exquisite 
border of the niche in the Via Calzaioli facade, in which 
Christ and S. Thomas now stand. He was also to have 
made the figures (for the Merchant's Guild) but was busy 
elsewhere, and they fell to Verrocchio, of whom also we 
shall have much to see and say at the Bargello, and to my 
mind they are the most beautiful of all. The John the 
Baptist (made for the Cloth-dealers), also on this facade, is 
by Ghiberti of the Baptistery gates. On the facade of the 
Via de' Lamberti is Donatello's superb S. Mark (for the 
Joiners), which led to Michelangelo's criticism that he had 
never seen a man who looked more virtuous, and if S. Mark 
were really like that he would believe all his words. " Why 



THE FLORENTINE GUILDS 95 

don't you speak to me ?" he also said to this statue, as 
Donatello had said to the Zuccone. Higher on this fagade 
is Luca della Robbia's famous arms of the Silk-weavers, one 
of the perfect things. Luca also made the arms of the 
Guild of Merchants, with its Florentine fleur-de-lis in the 
midst. For the rest, Ghiberti's S. Stephen, and Ghiberti 
and Michelozzo's S. Matthew, on the entrance wall, are the 
most remarkable. The blacksmith relief is very lively and 
the blacksmith's saint a noble figure. 

The little square reliefs let into the wall at intervals 
are often charming, and the stone-work of the windows is 
very lovely. In fact, the four walls of this fortress church 
are almost inexhaustible. Within, its vaulted roof is so 
noble, its proportions so satisfying. One should often sit 
quietly here, in the gloom, and do nothing. 

The little building just across the way was the Guild 
House of the Arte della Lana, or Wool-combers, and is now 
the head-quarters of the Italian Dante Society, who hold a 
conference every Thursday in the large room over Or San 
Michele, gained by the flying buttress-bridge. The dark 
picture on the outer wall is the very Madonna to which, 
when its position was at the Mercato Vecchio, condemned 
criminals used to pray on their way to execution. 

Before we leave Or San Michele and the Arte della Lana, 
a word on the guilds of Florence is necessary, for at a 
period in Florentine history between, say, the middle of the 
thirteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, they 
were the very powerful controllers of the domestic affairs 
of the city ; and it is possible that it would have been 
better for the Florentines had they continued to be so. 
For Florence was essentially mercantile and the guilds 
were composed of business men; and it is natural that 
business men should know better than noblemen what a 



96 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

business city needed. They were divided into major guilds, 
chief of which were the woollen merchants — the Arte della 
Lana — and the silk merchants — the Calimala — and it was 
their pride to put their riches at the city's service. Thus, 
the Arte della Lana had charge of the building of the 
cathedral. Each of the major guilds provided a Prior, and 
the Priors elected the Signoria, who governed the city. It 
is one of the principal charges that is brought against 
Cosimo de' Medici that he broke the power of the guilds. 

Returning to the Via Calzaioli, and turning to the 
right, we come very quickly to the Piazza della Signoria, 
and see before us, diagonally across it, the Loggia de' Lanzi 
and the Palazzo Vecchio, with the gleaming, gigantic 
figure of Michelangelo's David against the dark gateway. 
This, more than the Piazza del Duomo, is the centre of 
Florence. 

The Palazzo Vecchio was for centuries called the Sig- 
noria, being the home of the Gonfalonier of Florence and 
the Signoria who assisted his councils. It was begun by 
Arnolfo, the architect of the Duomo and S. Croce, at the 
end of the thirteenth century, that being, as we have seen, 
a period of great prosperity and ambition in Florence, but 
many alterations and additions were made — by Michelozzo, 
Cronaca, Vasari, and others — to bring it to what it now is. 
After being the scene of many riots, executions, and much 
political strife and dubiety, it became a ducal palace in 
1532, and is now a civic building and show-place. In the 
old days the Palazzo had a ringhiera, or platform, in front 
of it, from which proclamations were made. To know what 
this was like one has but to go to S. Trinita on a very fine 
morning and look at Ghirlandaio's fresco of the granting 
of the charter to S. Francis. The scene, painted in 1485, 
includes, not only the Signoria but the Loggia de' Lanzi 



TWO TOWERS : A CONTRAST 97 

(then the Loggia dell' Orcagna) — both before any statues 
were set up. 

Every fagade of the Palazzo Vecchio is splendid. I can- 
not say which I admire more — that which one sees from 
the Loggia de' Lanzi, with its beautiful coping of corbels, 
at once so heavy and so light, with coloured escutcheons 
between them, or that in the Via de* Gondi, with its fine 
jumble of old brickwork among the stones. The Palazzo 
Vecchio is one of the most resolute and independent build- 
ings in the world ; and it had need to be strong, for the waves 
of Florentine revolt were always breaking against it. The 
tower rising from this square fortress has at once grace and 
strength and presents a complete contrast to Giotto's cam- 
panile ; for Giotto's campanile is so light and delicate and 
reasonable and this tower of the Signoria so stern and 
noble. There is a difference as between a beautiful woman 
and a powerful man. In the functions of the two towers 
— the dominating towers of Florence — is a wide difference 
also, for the campanile calls to prayer, while for years the 
sombre notes of the great Signoria bell — the Vacca — rang 
out only to bid the citizens to conclave or battle or to 
sound an alarm. 

It was this Vacca which (with others) the brave Piero 
Capponi threatened to ring when Charles VIII wished, in 
1494, to force a disgraceful treaty on the city. The scene 
was the Medici Palace in the Via Larga. The paper was 
yeady for signature and Capponi would not sign. "Then I 
must bid my trumpets blow," said Charles. "If you sound 
your trumpets," Capponi replied, "we will ring our bells ;" 
and the King gave way, for he knew that his men had no 
chance in this city if it rose suddenly against them. 

But the glory of the Palazzo Vecchio tower — after its 
proportions — is that brilliant inspiration of the architect 



98 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

which led him, so to speak, to begin again by setting the 
four columns on the top of the solid portion. These 
pillars are indescribably right : so solid and yet so light, 
so powerful and yet so comely. Their duty was to sup- 
port the bells, and particularly the Vacca, when he rocked 
his gigantic weight of green bronze to and fro to warn the 
city. Seen from a distance the columns are always beauti- 
ful; seen close by they are each a tower of comfortable 
strength. And how the wind blows through them from 
the Apennines ! 

The David on the left of the Palazzo Vecchio main door 
is only a copy. The original stood there until 1873, when, 
after three hundred and sixty-nine years, it was moved to 
a covered spot in the Accademia, as we shall there see and 
learn its history. If we want to know what the Palazzo 
Vecchio looked like at the time David was placed there, 
a picture by Piero di Cosimo in our National Gallery 
tells us, for he makes it the background of his portrait 
of Ferrucci, No. 895. 

The group on the right represents Hercules and Cacus, 1 
and is by Baccio Bandinelli (1485-1560), a coarse and 
offensive man, jealous of most people and particularly of 
Michelangelo, to whom, but for his displeasing Pope 
Clement VII, the block of marble from which the Hercules 
was carved would have been given. Bandinelli in his 
delight at obtaining it vowed to surpass that master's 
David, and those who want to know what Florence thought 
of his effort should consult the amusing and malicious 
pages of Cellini's Autobiography. On its way to Bandi- 

1 Cacus, the son of Vulcan and Medusa, was a famous robber who 
breathed fire and smoke and laid waste Italy. He made the mistake, 
however, of robbing Hercules of some cows, and for this Hercules 
strangled him. 



THE MARZOCCO 99 

nelli's studio the block fell into the Arno, and it was a 
joke of the time that it had drowned itself to avoid its fate 
at the sculptor's hands. Even after he had half done it, 
there was a moment when Michelangelo had an opportu- 
nity of taking over the stone and turning it into a Sam- 
son, but the siege of Florence intervened, and eventually 
Bandinelli had his way and the hideous thing now on view 
was evolved. 

The lion at the left end of the fagade is also a copy, 
the original by Donatello being in the Bargello, close by ; 
but the pedestal is Donatello's original. This lion is 
the Marzocco, the legendary guardian of the Florentine 
republic, and it stood here for four centuries and more, 
superseding one which was kissed as a sign of submission 
by thousands of Pisan prisoners in 1364. The Florentine 
fleur-de-lis on the pediment is very beautiful. The same 
lion may be seen in iron on his staff at the top of the 
Palazzo Vecchio tower, and again on the Bargello, bravely 
flourishing his lily against the sky. 

The great fountain with its bronze figures at this corner 
is by Bartolommeo Ammanati, a pupil of Bandinelli, and 
the statue of Cosimo I is by Gian Bologna, who was the best 
of the post-Michelangelo sculptors and did much good work 
in Florence, as we shall see at the Bargello and in the 
Boboli Gardens. He studied under Michelangelo in Rome. 
Though born a Fleming and called a Florentine, his great 
fountain at Bologna, which is really a fine thing, has iden- 
tified his fame with that city. Had not Ammanati's design 
better pleased Cosimo I, the Bologna fountain would be 
here, for it was designed for this piazza. Gian's best-known 
work is the Flying Mercury in the Bargello, which we 
have seen, on mantelpieces and in shop windows, every- 
where; but what is considered his masterpiece is over 



100 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

there, in the Loggia de' Lanzi, the very beautiful building 
on the right of the Palazzo, the "Rape of the Sabines," 
a group which, to me, gives no pleasure. The bronze reliefs 
under the Cosimo statue — this Cosimo being, of course, 
far other than Cosimo de' Medici, Father of his Country : 
Cosimo I of Tuscany, who insisted upon a crown and 
reigned from 1537 to 1575 — represents his assumption of 
rule on the death of Alessandro in 1537; his triumphant 
entry into Siena when he conquered it and absorbed it; 
and his reception of the rank of Grand Duke. Of Cosimo 
(whom we met in Chapter V) more will be said when we 
enter the Palazzo Vecchio. 

Between this statue and the Loggia de' Lanzi is a bronze 
tablet let into the paving which tells us that it was on this 
very spot, in 1498, that Savonarola and two of his com- 
panions were put to death. The ancient palace on the 
Duomo side of the piazza is attributed in design to 
Raphael, who, like most of the great artists of his time, 
was also an architect and was the designer of the Palazzo 
Pandolfini in the Via San Gallo, No. 74 The Palazzo we 
are now admiring for its blend of massiveness and beauty 
is the Uguccione, and anybody who wishes may prob- 
ably have a whole floor of it to-day for a few shillings a 
week. The building which completes the piazza on the 
right of us, with coats of arms on its fagade, is now given 
to the Board of Agriculture and has been recently restored. 
It was once a Court of Justice. The great building at the 
opposite side of the piazza, where the trams start, is a 
good example of modern Florentine architecture based on 
the old : the Palazzo Landi, built in 1871 and now chiefly 
an insurance office. In London we have a more attractive 
though smaller derivative of the great days of Florentine 
building, in Standen's wool shop in Jermyn Street. 




THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 

FROM THE UNFINISHED PAINTING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE UFTIZI 



THE LOGGIA DE' LANZI 101 

The Piazza dell a Signoria has such riches that one is 
in danger of neglecting some. The Palazzo Vecchio, for 
example, so overpowers the Loggia de' Lanzi in size as to 
draw the eye from that perfect structure. One should 
not allow this to happen ; one should let the Palazzo 
Vecchio's solid nobility wait awhile and concentrate on 
the beauty of Orcagna's three arches. Coming so freshly 
from his tabernacle in Or San Michele we are again re- 
minded of the versatility of the early artists. 

This structure, originally called the Loggia de' Priori or 
Loggia d'Orcagna, was built in the fourteenth century as 
an open place for the delivery of proclamations and for 
other ceremonies, and also as a shelter from the rain, the 
last being a purpose it still serves. It was here that 
Savonarola's ordeal by fire would have had place had it not 
been frustrated. Vasari also gives Orcagna the four sym- 
bolical figures in the recesses in the spandrels of the arches. 
The Loggia, which took its new name from the Swiss 
lancers, or lanzi, that Cosimo I kept there — he being a 
fearful ruler and never comfortable without a bodyguard — 
is now a recognized place of siesta ; and hither many people 
carry their poste-restante correspondence from the neigh- 
bouring post office in the Uffizi to read in comfort. A 
barometer and thermometer are almost the only novelties 
that a visitor from the sixteenth century would notice. 

The statuary is both old and new ; for here are genuine 
antiques once in Ferdinand I's Villa Medici at Rome, 
and such modern masterpieces as Donatello's Judith and 
Holofernes, Cellini's Perseus, and Gian Bologna's two 
muscular and restless groups. The best of the antiques 
is the Woman Mourning, the fourth from the end on the 
left, which is a superb creation. 

Donatello's Judith, which gives me less pleasure than 



102 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

any of his work, both in the statue and in the relief, was 
commissioned for Cosimo de' Medici, who placed it in 
the courtyard or garden of the Medici palace — Judith, 
like David, by her brave action against a tyrant, being 
a champion of the Florentine republic. In 1495, after 
Cosimo's worthless grandson Piero de' Medici had been 
expelled from Florence and the Medici palace sacked, the 
statue was moved to the front of the Palazzo Vecchio, where 
the David now is, and an inscription placed on it describing 
it as a warning to all enemies of liberty. This position 
being needed for Michelangelo's David, in 1506, Judith 
was moved to the Loggia to the place where the Sabine 
group now is. In 1560 it took up its present position. 

Cellini's Perseus will not quite do, I think, after Dona- 
tello and Verrocchio; but few bronzes are more famous, 
and certainly of none has so vivacious and exciting a story 
been written as Cellini's own, setting forth his disappoint- 
ments, mortifications, and pride in connexion with this 
statue. Cellini, whatever one may think of his veracity, 
is a diverting and valuable writer, and the picture 
of Cosimo I which he draws for us is probably very 
near the truth. We see him haughty, familiar, capri- 
cious, vain, impulsive, clear-sighted, and easily flattered; 
intensely pleased to be in a position to command the ser- 
vices of artists and very unwilling to pay. Cellini was a 
blend of lackey, child, and genius. He left Francis I in 
order to serve Cosimo and never ceased to regret the 
change. The Perseus was his greatest accomplishment, 
for Cosimo, and the narrative of its casting is terrific and not 
a little like Dumas. When it was uncovered in its present 
position all Florence flocked to the Loggia to praise it ; the 
poets placed commendatory sonnets on the pillars, and the 
sculptor peacocked up and down in an ecstasy of triumph. 



BENVENUTO CELLINI 103 

Then, however, his troubles once more began, for Cosimo had 
the craft to force Cellini to name the price, and we see Cellini 
in an agony between desire for enough and fear lest if he 
named enough he would offend his patron. 

The whole book is a comedy of vanity and jealousy 
and Florentine vigour, with Courts as a background. It 
is good to read it; it is good, having read it, to study 
once again the unfevered resolute features of Donatello's 
S. George. Cellini himself we may see among the statues 
under the Uffizi and again in the place of honour (as a 
goldsmith) in the centre of the Ponte Vecchio. Looking 
at the Perseus and remembering Donatello, one realizes that 
what Cellini wanted was character. He had tempera- 
ment enough but no character. Perseus is superb, com- 
manding, distinguished, and one doesn't care a fig for it. 

On entering the Palazzo Vecchio we come instantly to 
one of the most charming things in Florence — Verrocchio's 
fountain — which stands in the midst of the courtyard. 
This adorable work — a little bronze Cupid struggling with 
a spouting dolphin — was made for Lorenzo de' Medici's 
country villa at Careggi and was brought here when the 
palazzo was refurnished for Francis I, Cosimo I's son and 
successor, and his bride, Joanna of Austria, in 1565. 
Nothing could better illustrate the accomplishment and 
imaginative adaptability of the great craftsmen of the day 
than the two works of Verrocchio that we have now seen : 
the Christ and S. Thomas at Or San Michele, in Dona- 
tello and Michelozzo's niche, and this exquisite fountain 
splashing water so musically. Notice the rich decorations of 
the pillars of this courtyard and the rich colour and power 
of the pillars themselves. The half -obliterated frescoes of 
Austrian towns on the walls were made to prevent Joanna 
from being homesick, but were more likely, one would guess, 



104 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

to stimulate that malady. In the left corner is the en- 
trance to the old armoury, now empty, with openings in 
the walls through which pieces might be discharged at 
various angles on any advancing host. The groined ceiling 
could support a pyramid. 

The Palazzo Vecchio's ground floor is a series of thorough- 
fares in which people are passing continually amid huge 
pillars and along dark passages; but our way is up the 
stone steps immediately to the left on leaving the court- 
yard where Verrocchio's child eternally smiles, for the steps 
take us to that vast hall designed by Cronaca for Savona- 
rola's Great Council, which was called into being for the 
government of Florence after the luckless Piero de* Medici 
had been banished in 1494. Here much history was made. 
As to its structure and its architect, Vasari, who later 
was called in to restore it, has a deal to say, but it is too 
technical for us. It was built by Simone di Pollaiuolo, 
who was known as Cronaca (the Chronicler) from his vivid 
way of telling his adventures. Cronaca (1454-1508), who 
was a personal friend and devotee of Savonarola, drew up 
his plan in consultation with Leonardo da Vinci, Michel- 
angelo (although then so young : only nineteen or twenty), 
and others. Its peculiarity is that it is one of the largest 
rooms in existence without pillars. From the foot of the 
steps to the further wall I make it fifty-eight paces, and 
thirty wide ; and the proportions strike the eye as perfect. 
The wall behind the steps is not at right angles with the 
others — and this must be as peculiar as the absence of 
pillars. 

Once there were to be paintings here by the greatest of 
all, for masters no less than Leonardo and Michelangelo 
were commissioned to decorate it, each with a great his- 
torical painting : a high honour for the youthful Michel- 



THE TWO CARTOONS 105 

angelo. The loss of these works is one of the tragedies of 
art. Leonardo chose for his subject the battle of Anghiari, 
an incident of 1440 when the Florentines defeated Picci- 
nino and saved their Republic from the Milanese and 
Visconti. But both the cartoon and the fresco have gone 
for ever, and our sense of loss is not diminished by read- 
ing in Leonardo's Thoughts on Painting his directions 
for the use of artists who proposed to paint battles: one 
of the most interesting and exciting pieces of writing in 
the literature of art. Michelangelo's work, which never 
reached the wall of the room, as Leonardo's had done, was 
completed as a cartoon in 1504 to 1506 in his studio in the 
hospital of the dyers in Sant' Onofrio, which is now the Via 
Guelfa. The subject was also military : an incident in the 
long and bitter struggle between Florence and Pisa, when 
Sir John Hawkwood (then in the pay of the Pisans, before 
he came over finally to the Florentines) attacked a body 
of Florentines who were bathing in the river. The scene 
gave the young artist scope both for his power of delineating 
a spirited incident and for his drawing of the nude, 
and those who saw it said of this work that it was finer 
than anything the painter ever did. While it was in prog- 
ress all the young artists came to Sant' Onofrio to study 
it, as they and its creator had before flocked to the Car- 
mine, where Masaccio's frescoes had for three-quarters of 
a century been object-lessons to students. 

What became of the cartoon is not definitely known, 
but Vasari's story is that Bandmelli, the sculptor of the 
Hercules and Cacus outside the Palazzo, who was one of 
the most diligent copyists of the cartoon after it was 
placed in a room in this building, had the key of the door 
counterfeited, and, obtaining entrance during a moment of 
tumult, destroyed the picture. The reasons given are : (1, 



106 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

and a very poor one) that he desired to own the pieces; 
(2) that he wished to deprive other and rival students of 
the advantage of copying it ; (3) that he wanted Leonardo 
to be the only painter of the Palazzo to be considered; 
and (4, and sufficient) that he hated Michelangelo. At 
this time Bandinelli could not have been more than 
eighteen. Vasari's story is uncorroborated. 

Leonardo's battle merely perished, being done in some 
fugitive medium ; and the walls are now covered with the 
works of Vasari himself and his pupils and do not matter, 
while the ceiling is a muddle of undistinguished paint. 
There are many statues which also do not matter; but 
at the raised end is Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
cent, and the first Medici Pope, and at the other a colossal 
modern statue of Savonarola, who was in person the domi- 
nating influence here for the years between 1494 and 1497; 
who is to many the central figure in the history of this 
building ; and whose last night on earth was spent with 
his companions in this very room. But to him we come 
in the chapter on S. Marco. 

Many rooms in the Palazzo are to be seen only on 
special occasions, but the great hall is always accessible. 
Certain rooms upstairs, mostly with rich red and yellow 
floors, are also visible daily, all interesting; but most 
notable is the Salle de Lys, with its lovely blue walls of 
lilies, its glorious ceiling of gold and roses, Ghirlandaio's 
fresco of S. Zenobius, and the perfect marble doorway 
containing the wooden doors of Giuliano and Benedetto 
da Maiano, with the heads of Dante and Petrarch in in- 
tarsia. Note the figures of Charity and Temperance in 
the doorway and the charming youthful Baptist. 

In Eleanor of Toledo's dining-room there are some rich 
and elaborate green jugs which I remember very clearly, 



AN EAVESDROPPER'S COIGN 107 

and also the ceiling of her workroom with its choice of 
Penelope as the presiding genius. Both Eleanor's chapel 
and that in which Savonarola prayed before his execu- 
tion are shown. 

But the most popular room of all with visitors — and 
quite naturally — is the little boudoiresque study of 
Francis I, with its voluptuous ladies on the ceihng and 
the secret treasure-room leading from it, while on the 
way, just outside the door, is a convenient oubliette into 
which to push any inconvenient visitor. 

The loggia, which Mr. Morley has painted from the 
Via Castellani, is also always accessible, and from it one has 
one of those pleasant views of warm roofs in which Florence 
abounds. 

One of the most attractive of the smaller rooms usually on 
view is that which leads from the lily-room and contains 
nothing but maps of the world : the most decorative things 
conceivable, next to Chinese paintings. Looking natu- 
rally for Sussex on the English map, I found Winchelsey, 
Battel, Rye, Lewes, Sorham, Aronde, and Cicestra. 

From the map-room a little room is gained where the 
debates in the Great Council Hall might be secretly over- 
heard by interested eavesdroppers, but in particular by 
Cosimo I. A part of the cornice has holes in it for this 
purpose, but on regaining the hall itself I found that the 
disparity in the pattern was perfectly evident even to my 
eye, so that every one in those suspicious days must have 
been aware of the listener. 

The tower should certainly be ascended — not only for 
the view and to be so near the bells and the pillars, but 
also for historic associations. After a little way we come 
to the cell where Cosimo de' Medici, later to be the Father 
of his Country, was imprisoned, before that exile which 



108 OR SAN MICHELE AND PALAZZO VECCHIO 

ended in recall and triumph in 1433. This cell, although 
not exactly " a home from home," is possible. What is to 
be said of that other, some thousands of steps (as it seems) 
higher, where Savonarola was kept for forty days, varied 
only by intervals of torture ? For Savonarola's cell, which 
is very near the top, is nothing but a recess in the wall 
with a door to it. It cannot be more than five feet wide 
and eight feet long, with an open loophole to the wind. 
If a man were here for forty days and then pardoned his 
life would be worth very little. A bitter eyrie from which 
to watch the city one had risked all to reform. What 
thoughts must have been his in that trap ! What reviews 
of policy ! What illuminations as to Florentine character ! 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE UFFIZI I : THE BUILDING AND THE COLLECTORS 

The growth of a gallery — Vasari's Passaggio — Cosimo I — Francis I 

— Ferdinand I — Ferdinand II — Cosimo III — Anna Maria Ludovica 
de' Medici — Pietro-Leopoldo — The statues of the facade — Art, litera- 
ture, arms, science, and learning — The omissions — Florentine rapacity 

— An antique custom — Window views — The Uffizi drawings — The 

best picture. 

rilHE foreigner should understand at once that any 
•*- inquiries into the history of the Uffizi family — such 
as for example yield interesting results in the case of the 
Pazzi and the Albizzi — are doomed to failure ; because 
Uffizi merely means offices. The Palazzo degli Uffizi, or 
palace of offices, was built by Vasari, the biographer 
of the artists, for Cosimo I, who having taken the 
Signoria, or Palazzo Vecchio, for his own home, wished to 
provide another building for the municipal government. 
It was begun in 1560 and still so far fulfils its original pur- 
pose as to contain the general post office, while it also houses 
certain Tuscan archives and the national library. 

A glance at Piero di Cosimo 's portrait of Ferrucci in 
our National Gallery will show that an ordinary Florentine 
street preceded the erection of the Uffizi. At that time 
the top storey of the building, as it now exists, was an 
open terrace affording a pleasant promenade from the 
Palazzo Vecchio down to the river and back to the Loggia 
de' Lanzi. Beneath this were studios and workrooms 

109 



110 THE UFFIZI I: BUILDING AND COLLECTORS 

where Cosimo's army of artists and craftsmen (with Bron- 
zino and Cellini as the most famous) were kept busy ; while 
the public offices were on the ground floor. Then, as his 
family increased, Cosimo decided to move, and the incom- 
plete and abandoned Pitti Palace was bought and finished. 
In 1565, as we have seen, Francis, Cosimo's son, married and 
was installed in the Palazzo Vecchio, and it was then that 
Vasari was called upon to construct the Passaggio which 
unites the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti, crossing the 
river by the Ponte Vecchio — Cosimo's idea (borrowed 
it is said from Homer's description of the passage uniting 
the palaces of Priam and Hector), being not only that he 
and his son might have access to each other, but that in 
the event of danger on the other side of the river a body 
of soldiers could be swiftly and secretly mobilized there. 
Cosimo I died in 1574, and Francis I (1574-1587) suc- 
ceeded him not only in rule but in that patronage of the 
arts which was one of the finest Medicean traditions; 
and it was he who first thought of making the Uffizi a 
picture gallery. To do this was simple : it merely meant 
the loss of part of the terrace by walling and roofing it in. 
Ferdinand I (1587-1609) added the pretty Tribuna and 
other rooms, and brought hither a number of the treasures 
from the Villa Medici at Rome. Cosimo II (1609-1621) did 
little, but Ferdinand II (1621-1670) completed the roofing 
in of the terraces, placed there his own collection of draw- 
ings and a valuable collection of Venetian pictures which 
he had bought, together with those that his wife Vittoria 
della Rover e had brought him from Urbino, while his 
brothers, Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de' Medici and Cardinal 
Leopoldo de' Medici (the extremely ugly man with the 
curling chin, at the head of the Uffizi stairs,) added theirs. 
Giovanni Carlo's pictures, which mostly went to the Pitti, 




MADONNA AND CHILD 

FROM THE PAINTING BY LUCA SIGNORELLI IN THE UTFIZI 



MUNIFICENT MEDICI 111 

were varied ; but Leopold's were chiefly portraits of artists, 
wherever possible painted by themselves, a collection which 
is steadily being added to at the present time and is to 
be seen in several rooms of the UfEzi, and those minia- 
ture portraits of men of eminence which we shall see in 
the corridor between the Poccetti Gallery and Salon of 
Justice at the Pitti. Cosimo III (1670-1723) added the 
Dutch pictures and the famous Venus de' Medici and 
other Tribuna statuary. 

The galleries remained the private property of the 
Medici family until the Electress Palatine, Anna Maria 
Ludovica de' Medici, daughter of Cosimo III and great 
niece of the Cardinal Leopold, bequeathed all these treas- 
ures, to which she had greatly added, together with 
bronzes now in the Bargello, Etruscan antiquities now in 
the Archaeological Museum, tapestries also there, and 
books in the Laurent ian library, to Florence for ever, 
on condition that they should never be removed from 
Florence and should exist for the benefit of the public. Her 
death was in 1743, and with her passed away the last de- 
scendant of that Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1429) whom we 
saw giving commissions to Donatello, building the chil- 
dren's hospital, and helping Florence to the best of his 
power : so that the first Medici and the last were akin in 
love of art and in generosity to their beautiful city. 

The new Austrian Grand Dukes continued to add to 
the Uffizi, particularly Pietro-Leopoldo (1765-1790), who 
also founded the Accademia. To him was due the as- 
sembling, under the Uffizi roof, of all the outlying pictures 
then belonging to the state, including those in the gallery 
of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which owned, among 
others, the famous Hugo van der Goes. It was he also 
who brought together from Rome the Niobe statues and 



112 THE UFFIZI I: BUILDING AND COLLECTORS 

constructed a room for them. Leopold II added the 
Iscrizioni. 

It was as recently as 1842 to 1856 that the statues of the 
great Florentines were placed in the portico. These, be- 
ginning at the Palazzo Vecchio, are, first, against the in- 
ner wall, Cosimo Pater (1389-1464) and Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent (1450-1492) ; then, outside : Orcagna ; Andrea 
Pisano, of the first Baptistery doors ; Giotto and Donatello; 
Alberti, who could do everything and who designed the 
fagade of S. Maria Novella ; Leonardo and Michelangelo. 
Next, three poets, Dante (1265-1321), Francesco Petrarca 
(1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Then 
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the statesman, and 
Francesco Guicciardini (1482-1540), the historian. That 
completes the first side. 

At the end are Amerigo Vespucci (1451—1516), the ex- 
plorer, who gave his name to America, and Galileo Galilei 
(1564-1642), the astronomer; and above is Cosimo I, the 
first Grand Duke. 

On the Uffizi's river fagade are four figures only — and 
hundreds of swallows' nests. The figures are Francesco 
Ferrucci, who died in 1530, the general painted by Piero di 
Cosimo in our National Gallery, who recaptured Volterra 
from Pope Clement VII in 1529; Giovanni delle Bande 
Nere (1500-1527), father of Cosimo I, and a great fighting 
man; Piero Capponi, who died in 1496, and delivered 
Florence from Charles VIII in 1494, by threatening to 
ring the city bells ; and Farinata degli Uberti, an earlier 
soldier, who died in 1264 and is in the "Divina Commedia" 
as a hero. It was he who repulsed the Ghibelline sugges- 
tion that Florence should be destroyed and the inhabitants 
emigrate to Empoli. 

Working back towards the Loggia de' Lanzi we find 



GALLERY EXACTIONS 113 

less-known names : Pietro Antonio Michele (1679-1737), 
the botanist; Francesco Redi (1626-1697), a poet and a 
man of science ; Paolo Mascagni (1732-1815) , the anato- 
mist ; Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), the philosopher; S. 
Antonios (died 1461), Prior of the Convent of S. Marco and 
Archbishop of Florence ; Francesco Accorso (1182-1229), 
the jurist ; Guido Aretino (eleventh century), musician ; and 
Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572), the goldsmith and sculptor. 
The most notable omissions are Arnolfo and Brunelleschi, 
(but these are, as we have seen, on the facade of the 
Palazzo de' Canonici, opposite the south side of the cathe- 
dral) , Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, and Savonarola. Personally I 
should like to have still others here, among them Giorgio 
Vasari, in recognition of his enthusiastic and entertaining 
biographies of the Florentine artists, to say nothing of the 
circumstance that he designed this building. 

Before we enter any Florentine gallery let me say that 
there is only one free day and that the crowded Sabbath. 
Admittance to nearly all is a lira. Moreover, there is no 
re-admission. The charge strikes English visitors, accus- 
tomed to the open portals of their own museums and 
galleries, as an outrage, and it explains also the little 
interest in their treasures which most Florentines display, 
for being essentially a frugal people they have seldom seen 
them. Visitors who can satisfy the authorities that they 
are desirous of studying the works of art with a serious 
purpose can obtain free passes ; but only after certain pre- 
liminaries, which include a seance with a photographer 
to satisfy the doorkeeper, by comparing the real and 
counterfeit physiognomies, that no illicit transference 
of the precious privilege has been made. Italy is, one 
knows, not a rich country ; but the revenue which the 
gallery entrance-fees represent cannot reach any great 



114 THE UFFIZI I: BUILDING AND COLLECTORS 

volume, and such as it is it had much better, I should say, 
be raised by other means. Meanwhile, the foreigner chiefly 
pays it. What Giovanni de' Medici and Lorenzo de' 
Medici, and — even more — what Anna Maria Ludovica 
de' Medici, who bequeathed to the State these possessions, 
would think could they see this feverish and implacable 
pursuit of pence, I have not imagination, or scorn, enough 
to set down. 

Infirm and languid visitors should get it clearly into their 
heads (1) that the tour of the Uffizi means a long walk and 
(2) that there is a lift. You find it in the umbrella room 
— at every Florentine gallery and museum is an official 
whose one object in life is to take away your umbrella — 
and it costs twopence-halfpenny and is worth far more. 
But walking downstairs is imperative, because otherwise 
one would miss Silenus and Bacchus, and a beautiful ur- 
gent Mars, in bronze, together with other fine sculptured 
things. 

One of the quaintest symbols of conservatism in Florence 
is the scissors of the officials who supply tickets of entrance. 
Apparently the perforated line is unknown in Italy ; hence 
the ticket is divided from its counterfoil (which I assume 
goes to the authorities in order that they may check their 
horrid takings) by a huge pair of shears. These things 
are snip-snapping all over Italy, all day long. Having ob- 
tained your ticket you hand it to another official at a turn- 
stile, and at last you are free of cupidity and red tape and 
may breathe easily again and examine the products of the 
light-hearted generous Renaissance in the right spirit. 

One should never forget, in any gallery of Florence, to 
look out of the windows. There is always a courtyard, a 
street, or a spire against the sky ; and at the Uffizi there 
are the river and bridges and mountains. From the loggia 



THE PASSAGGIO 115 

of the Palazzo Vecchio I once saw a woman with some 
twenty or thirty city pigeons on the table of her little 
room, feeding them with maize. 

Except for glimpses of the river and the Via Guicciardini 
which it gives, I advise no one to walk through the passage 
uniting the Pitti and the Uffizi — unless of course bent on 
catching some of the ancient thrill when armed men ran 
swiftly from one palace to the other to quell a disturbance or 
repulse an assault. Particularly does this counsel apply to 
wet days, when all the windows are closed and there is no 
air. A certain interest attaches to the myriad portraits 
which line the walls, chiefly of the Medici and comparatively 
recent worthies ; but one must have a glutton's passion 
either for paint or history to wish to examine these. As a 
matter of fact, only a lightning-speed tourist could possibly 
think of seeing both the Uffizi and the Pitti on the same 
day, and therefore the need of the passage disappears. It 
is hard worked only on Sundays. 

The drawings in the cases in the first long corridor are 
worth close study — covering as they do the whole range 
of great Italian art : from, say, Uccello to Carlo Dolci. 
But as they are from time to time changed it is useless to 
say more of them. There is also on the first landing of the 
staircase a room in which exhibitions of drawings of the 
Old Masters are held, and this is worth knowing about, 
not only because of the riches of the portfolios in the 
collection, but also because once you have passed the doors 
you are inside the only picture gallery in Florence for 
which no entrance fee is asked. How the authorities have 
come to overlook this additional source of revenue, I have 
no notion; but they have, and visitors should hasten to 
make the most of it for fear that a translation of these 
words of mine may wander into bad hands. 



116 THE UFFIZI I: BUILDING AND COLLECTORS 

To name the most wonderful picture in the Uffizi would 
be a very difficult task. At the Accademia, if a plebiscite 
were taken, there is little doubt but that Botticelli's 
"Prima vera" would win. At the Pitti I personally would 
name Giorgione's " Concert'' without any hesitation at 
all ; but probably the public vote would go to Raphael's 
" Madonna della Sedia." But the Uffizi ? Here we are 
amid such wealth of masterpieces, and yet when one 
comes to pass them in review in memory none stands out 
as those other two I have named. Perhaps Botticelli 
would win again, with his "Birth of Venus." Were the 
Leonardo finished . . . but it is only a sketch. Luca 
Signorelli's wild flowers in No. 74 seem to abide with me 
as vividly and graciously as anything ; but they are but 
a detail and it is a very personal predilection. Perhaps 
the great exotic work painted far away in Belgium — the 
Van der Goes triptych — is the most memorable ; but to 
choose an alien canvas is to break the rules of the game. 
Is it perhaps the unfinished Leonardo after all ? If not, 
and not the Botticelli, it is beyond question that lovely 
adoring Madonna, so gentle and sweet, against the purest 
and bluest of Tuscan skies, which is attributed to Filippino 
Lippi : No. 1354. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE UFFIZI II I THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

Lorenzo Monaco — Fra Angelico — M ariotto Albertinelli turns inn- 
keeper — The Venetian rooms — Giorgione's death — Titian — Man- 
tegna uniting north and south — Giovanni Bellini — Domenico 
Ghirlandaio — Michelangelo — Luca Signorelli — Wild flowers — Leo- 
nardo da Vinci — Paolo Uccello. 

THE first and second rooms are Venetian; but I am 
inclined to think that it is better to take the second 
door on the left — the first Tuscan salon — and walking 
straight across it come at once to the Salon of Lorenzo 
Monaco and the primitives. For the earliest good pictures 
are here. Here especially one should remember that the 
pictures were painted never for a gallery but for churches. 
Lorenzo Monaco (Lawrence the Monk, 1370-c. 1425), who 
gives his name to this room, was a monk of the Camal- 
dolese order in the Monastery of the Angeli, and was 
a little earlier than Fra Angelico (the Angelic Brother), 
the more famous painting monk, whose dates are 1387-1455. 
Lorenzo was influenced by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's godson, 
friend, pupil, and assistant. His greatest work is this 
large Uffizi altar-piece — he painted nothing but altar- 
pieces — depicting the Coronation of the Virgin : a great 
gay scene of splendour, containing pretty angels who 
must have been the delight of children in church. The 
predella — and here let me advise the visitor never to 
overlook the predellas, where the artist often throws off 

117 



118 THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

formality and allows his more natural feelings to have 
play, almost as though he painted the picture for others 
and the predella for himself — is peculiarly interesting. 
Look, at the left, at the death of an old Saint attended 
by monks and nuns, whose grief is profound. One other 
good Lorenzo is here, an "Adoration of the Magi," No. 39, 
a little out of drawing but full of life. 

But for most people the glory of the room is not 
Lorenzo the Monk, but Brother Giovanni of Fiesole, 
known evermore as Beato, or Fra, Angelico. Of that most 
adoring and most adorable of painters I say much in the 
chapter on the Accademia, where he is very fully repre- 
sented, and it might perhaps be well to turn to those pages 
(227-230) and read here, on our first sight of his genius, 
what is said. Two Angelicos are in this room — the great 
triptych, opposite the chief Lorenzo, and the "Crowning 
of the Virgin," on an easel. The triptych is as much 
copied as any picture in the gallery, not, however, for its 
principal figures, but for the border of twelve angels round 
the centre panel. Angelico's benignancy and sweetness 
are here, but it is not the equal of the "Coronation," 
which is a blaze of pious fervour and glory. The group 
of saints on the right is very charming ; but we are to be 
more pleased by this radiant hand when we reach the 
Accademia. Already, however, we have learned his love 
of blue. Another altar-piece with a subtle quality of 
its own is the early Annunciation by Simone Martini 
of Siena (1285-1344) and Lippo Memmi, his brother (d. 
1357), in which the angel speaks his golden words across 
the picture through a vase of lilies, and the Virgin receives 
them shrinkingly. It is all very primitive, but it has great 
attraction, and it is interesting to think that the picture 
must be getting on for six hundred years of age. This 




THE LOGGIA OF THE PALAZZO VECCHIO AND THE VIA DE' LEON I 



ALBERTINELLI IN REVOLT 119 

Simone was a pupil of Giotto and the painter of a portrait 
of Petrarch's Laura, now preserved in the Laurentian 
library, which earned him two sonnets of eulogy. It is 
also two Sienese painters who have made the gayest 
thing in this room, the predella, No. 1304, by Neroccio di 
Siena (1447-1500) and Francesco di Giorgio di Siena 
(1439-1502), containing scenes in the life of S. Benedetto. 
Neroccio did the landscape and figures; the other the 
architecture, and very fine it is. Another delightful 
predella is that by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1498), Fra 
Angelico's pupil, whom we have seen at the Riccardi 
palace. Gozzoli's predella is No. 1302. Finally, look at 
No. 64, which shows how prettily certain imitators of Fra 
Angelico could paint. 

After the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco let us enter the first 
Tuscan room. The draughtsmanship of the great Last 
Judgment fresco by Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517) and 
Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515) is very fine. It is now 
a ruin, but enough remains to show that it must have 
been impressive. These collaborators, although intimate 
friends, ultimately went different ways, for Fra Bartolom- 
meo came under the influence of Savonarola, burned his 
nude drawings, and entered the Convent of S. Marco; where- 
as Albertinelli, who was a convivial follower of Venus, tiring 
of art and even more of art jargon, took an inn outside the 
S. Gallo gate and a tavern on the Ponte Vecchio, remark- 
ing that he had found a way of life that needed no 
knowledge of muscles, foreshortening, or perspective, and 
better still, was without critics. Among his pupils was 
Franciabigio, whose lovely Madonna of the Well we are 
coming to in the Tribuna. 

Chief among the other pictures are two by the delight- 
ful Alessio Baldovinetti, the master of Domenico Ghir- 



120 THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

landaio, Nos. 60 and 56 ; and a large early altar-piece by the 
brothers Orcagna, painted in 1367 for S. Maria Nuova, now 
the principal hospital of Florence and once the home of 
many beautiful pictures. This work is rather dingy now, 
but it is interesting as coming in part from the hand that 
designed the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the Loggia 
de' Lanzi. Another less-known painter represented here is 
Francesco Granacci (1469-1543), the author of Nos. 1541 
and 1280, both rich and warm and pleasing. Granacci was 
a fellow-pupil of Michelangelo both in Lorenzo de' Medici's 
garden and in Ghirlandaio's workshop, and the bosom friend 
of that great man all his life. Like Piero di Cosimo, 
Granacci was a great hand at pageantry, and Lorenzo de* 
Medici kept him busy. He was not dependent upon art 
for his living, but painted for love of it, and Vasari makes 
him a very agreeable man. 

Here too is Gio. Antonio Sogliani (1492-1544), also a 
rare painter, with a finely coloured and finely drawn "Dis- 
puta," No. 63. This painter seems to have had the same 
devotion to his master, Lorenzo di Credi, that di Credi 
had for his master, Verrocchio. Vasari calls Sogliani a 
worthy religious man who minded his own affairs — a good 
epitaph. His work is rarely met with in Florence, but he 
has a large fresco at S. Marco. Lorenzo di Credi (1459- 
1537) himself has two pretty circular paintings here, of 
which No. 1528 is particularly sweet: "The Virgin and 
Child with St. John and Angels," all comfortable and happy 
in a Tuscan meadow ; while on an easel is another circular 
picture, by Pacchiarotto (1477-1535). This has good 
colour and twilight beauty, but it does not touch one and 
is not too felicitously composed. Over the door to the 
Venetian room is a Cosimo Rosselli with a prettily affec- 
tionate Madonna and Child. 



GLORIOUS GIORGIONE 121 

From this miscellaneous Tuscan room we pass to the 
two rooms which contain the Venetian pictures, of which I 
shall say less than might perhaps be expected, not because 
I do not intensely admire them but because I feel that the 
chief space in a Florentine book should be given to Floren- 
tine or Tuscan things. As a matter of fact, I find myself 
when in the Uffizi continually drawn to revisit these walls. 
The chief treasures are the Titians, the Giorgiones, the 
Mantegnas, the Carpaccio, and the Bellini allegory. These 
alone would make the Uffizi a Mecca of connoisseurs. Gior- 
gione is to be found in his richest perfection at the Pitti, 
in his one unforgettable work that is preserved there, but 
here he is wonderful too, with his Cavalier of Malta, black 
and golden, and the two rich scenes, Nos. 621 and 630, 
nominally from Scripture, but really from romantic Italy. 
To me these three pictures are the jewels of the Venetian 
collection. To describe them is impossible : enough to 
say that some glowing genius produced them ; and what- 
ever the experts admit, personally I prefer to consider that 
genius Giorgione. Giorgione, who was born in 1477 and 
died young — at thirty-three — was, like Titian, the pupil 
of Bellini, but was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. 
Later he became Titian's master. He was passionately de- 
voted to music and to ladies, and it was indeed from a lady 
that he had his early death, for he continued to kiss her 
after she had taken the plague. (No bad way to die, 
either; for to be in the power of an emotion that sways 
one to such foolishness is surely better than to live the 
lukewarm calculating lives of most of us.) Giorgione's claim 
to distinction is that not only was he a glorious colourist 
and master of light and shade, but may be said to have 
invented small genre pictures that could be carried about 
and hung in this or that room at pleasure — such pictures 



m THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

as many of the best Dutch painters were to bend their 
genius to almost exclusively — his favourite subjects being 
music parties and picnics. These Moses and Solomon 
pictures in the Uffizi are of course only a pretext for glori- 
ously coloured arrangements of people with rich scenic 
backgrounds. No. 621 is the finer. The way in which 
the baby is being held in the other indicates how little 
Giorgione thought of verisimilitude. The colour was the 
thing. 

After the Giorgiones the Titians, chief of which is 
No. 633, "The Madonna and Child with S. John and S. 
Anthony," sometimes called the " Madonna of the Roses," 
a work which throws a pallor over all Tuscan pictures; 
No. 626, the golden Flora, who glows more gloriously 
every moment (whom we shall see again, at the Pitti, 
as the Magdalen) ; the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, 
Nos. 605 and 599, the Duchess set at a window with what 
looks so curiously like a deep blue Surrey landscape through 
it and a village spire in the midst ; and 618, an unfinished 
Madonna and Child in which the Master's methods can be 
followed. The Child, completed save for the final bath 
of light, is a miracle of draughtsmanship. 

The triptych by Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) is of 
inexhaustible interest, for here, as ever, Mantegna is full of 
thought and purpose. The left panel represents the As- 
cension, Christ being borne upwards by eleven cherubim 
in a solid cloud ; the right panel — by far the best, I think 
— shows the Circumcision, where the painter has set him- 
self various difficulties of architecture and goldsmith's work 
for the pleasure of overcoming them, every detail being 
painted with Dutch minuteness and yet leaving the picture 
big ; while the middle panel, which is concave, depicts an 
Adoration of the Magi that will bear much study. The 



BELLINI'S ALLEGORY 123 

whole effect is very northern : not much less so than our 
own new National Gallery Mabuse. Mantegna also has a 
charming Madonna and Child, No. 1025, with pleasing 
pastoral and stone-quarrying activities in the distance. 

On the right of the triptych is the so-called Carpaccio 
(1450-1519), a confused but glorious melee of youths and 
halberds, reds and yellows and browns, very modern and 
splendid and totally unlike anything else in the whole 
gallery. Uccello may possibly be recalled, but only for 
subject.- Finally there is Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516), 
master of Titian and Giorgione, with his "Sacra Conversa- 
zione," No. 631, which means I know not what but has a 
haunting quality. Later we shall see a picture by Michel- 
angelo which has been accused of blending Christianity 
and paganism ; but Bellini's sole purpose was to do this. 
We have children from a Bacchic vase and the crowned 
Virgin; two naked saints and a Venetian lady; and a 
centaur watching a hermit. The foreground is a mosaic 
terrace; the background is rocks and water. It is all 
bizarre and very curious and memorable and quite unique. 
For the rest, I should mention two charming Guardis ; a rich 
little Canaletto ; a nice scene of sheep by Jacopo Bassano ; 
the portrait of an unknown young man by an unknown 
painter, No. 1157 ; and Tintoretto's daring "Abraham and 
Isaac." 

The other Venetian room is almost wholly devoted to 
portraits, chief among them being a red-headed Tintoretto 
burning furiously, No. 613, and Titian's sly and sinister 
Caterina Cornaro in her gorgeous dress, No. 648 ; Piombo's 
"L'Uomo Ammalato" ; Tintoretto's Jacopo Sansovino, the 
sculptor, the grave old man holding his calipers who made 
that wonderful Greek Bacchus at the Bargello ; Schiavone's 
ripe, bearded "Ignoto," No. 649, and, perhaps above all, 



124 THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

the Moroni, No. 386, black against grey. There is also 
Paolo Veronese's "Holy Family with S. Catherine, ,, 
superbly masterly and golden but suggesting the Rialto 
rather than Nazareth. 

One picture gives the next room, the Sala di Michelan- 
gelo, its name ; but entering from the Venetian room we 
come first on the right to a very well-known Lippo Lippi, 
copied in every picture shop in Florence : No. 1307, a 
Madonna and two Children. Few pictures are so beset 
by delighted observers, but apart from the perfection of 
it as an early painting, leaving nothing to later dexterity, 
its appeal to me is weak. The Madonna (whose head-dress, 
as so often in Lippo Lippi, foreshadows Botticelli) and 
the landscape equally delight; the children almost repel, 
and the decorative furniture in the corner quite repels. 
The picture is interesting also for its colour, which is unlike 
anything else in the gallery, the green of the Madonna's 
dress being especially lovely and distinguished, and vul- 
garizing the Ghirlandaio — No. 1297 — which hangs next. 
This picture is far too hot throughout, and would indeed 
be almost displeasing but for the irradiation of the Virgin's 
face. The other Ghirlandaio — No. 1295 — in this room is 
far finer and sweeter; but at the Accademia and the 
Badia we are to see him at his best in this class of work. 
None the less, No. 1295 is a charming thing, and the 
little Mother and her happy Child, whose big toe is 
being so reverently adored by the ancient mage, are 
very near real simple life. This artist, we shall see, 
always paints healthy, honest babies. The seaport in the 
distance is charming too. 

Ghirlandaio's place in this room is interesting on account 
of his relation to Michelangelo as first instructor; but 
by the time that the great master's "Holy Family," 



MICHELANGELO 125 

hanging here, was painted all traces of Ghirlandaio's influ- 
ence had disappeared, and if any forerunner is noticeable 
it is Luca Signorelli . But we must first glance at the pretty 
little Lorenzo di Credi, No. 1160, the Annunciation, an 
artificial work full of nice thoughts and touches, with 
the prettiest little blue Virgin imaginable, a heavenly 
landscape, and a predella in monochrome, in one scene of 
which Eve rises from the side of the sleeping Adam with 
extraordinary realism. The announcing Gabriel is deferen- 
tial but positive ; Mary is questioning but not wholly sur- 
prised. In any collection of Annunciations this picture 
would find a prominent place. 

The "Holy Family" of Michelangelo — No. 1139 — is re- 
markable for more than one reason. It is, to begin with, the 
only finished easel picture that exists from his brush. It is 
also his one work in oils, for he afterwards despised that 
medium as being fit "only for children." The frame is 
contemporary and was made for it, the whole being com- 
missioned by Angelo Doni, a wealthy connoisseur whose 
portrait by Raphael we shall see in the Pitti, and who, 
according to Vasari, did his best to get it cheaper than his 
bargain, and had in the end to pay dearer. The period of 
the picture is about 1503, while the great David was in 
progress, when the painter was twenty-eight. That it is 
masterly and superb there can be no doubt, but, like so much 
of Michelangelo's work, it suffers from its author's great- 
ness. There is an austerity of power here that ill consorts 
with the tender domesticity of the scene, and the Child is 
a young Hercules. The nude figures in the background 
introduce an alien element and suggest the conflict between 
Christianity and paganism, the new religion and the old : 
in short, the Twilight of the Gods. Whether Michelangelo 
intended this we shall not know; but there it is. The 



126 THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

prevailing impression left by the picture is immense power 
and virtuosity and no religion. In the beautiful Luca 
Signorelli — No. 74 — next it, we find at once a curious 
similarity and difference. The Madonna and Child only 
are in the foreground, a not too radiant but very tender 
couple ; in the background are male figures nearly nude : 
not quite, as Michelangelo made them, and suggesting no 
discord, as in his picture. Luca was born in 1441, and was 
thus thirty-four years older than Michelangelo. This 
picture is perhaps that one presented by Luca to Lorenzo 
de* Medici, of which Vasari tells, and if so it was probably 
on a wall in the Medici palace when Michelangelo as a 
boy was taught with Lorenzo's sons. Luca's sweetness 
was alien to Michelangelo, but not his melancholy or his 
sense of composition ; while Luca's devotion to the human 
form as the unit of expression was in Michelangelo carried 
out to its highest power. Vasari, who was a relative of 
Luca's and a pupil of Michelangelo's, says that his master 
had the greatest admiration for Luca's genius. 

Luca Signorelli was born at Cortona, and was instructed 
by Piero della Francesca, whose one Uffizi painting is in a 
later room. His chief work is at Cortona, at Rome (in 
the Sixtine Chapel), and at Orvieto. His fame was suffi- 
cient in Florence in 1491 for him to be made one of the 
judges of the designs for the fagade of the Duomo. Luca 
lived to a great age, not dying till 1524, and was much 
beloved. He was magnificent in his habits and loved fine 
clothes, was very kindly and helpful in disposition, and 
the influence of his naturalness and sincerity upon art 
was great. One very pretty sad story is told of him, to 
the effect that when his son, whom he had dearly loved, was 
killed at Cortona, he caused the body to be stripped, and 
painted it with the. utmost exactitude, that through his 



LUCA SIGNORELLI 127 

own handiwork he might be able to contemplate that 
treasure of which fate had robbed him. Perhaps the most 
beautiful or at any rate the most idiosyncratic thing in 
the picture before us is its lovely profusion of wayside 
flowers. These come out but poorly in the photograph, 
but in the painting they are exquisite both in form and in 
detail. Luca painted them as if he loved them. (There is 
a hint of the same thoughtful care in the flowers in No. 1133, 
by Luca, in our National Gallery; but these at Florence 
are the" best.) No. 74 is in tempera : the next, also by 
Luca, No. 1291, is in oil, a "Holy Family," a work at 
once powerful, rich, and sweet. Here, again, we may trace 
an influence on Michelangelo, for the child is shown dep- 
recating a book which his mother is displaying, while in 
the beautiful marble tondo of the "Madonna and Child" 
by Michelangelo, which we are soon to see in the Bar- 
gello, a reading lesson is in progress, and the child 
wearying of it. We find Luca again in the next large 
picture, No. 1547 — a Crucifixion, with various Saints, done 
in collaboration with Perugino. The design suggests Luca 
rather than his companion, and the woman at the foot of 
the cross is surely the type of which he was so fond. The 
drawing of Christ is masterly and all too sombre for 
Perugino. Finally, there is a Luca predella, No. 1298, 
representing the Annunciation, the Birth of Christ (in 
which Joseph is older almost than in any version), and the 
Adoration of the Magi, all notable for freedom and rich- 
ness. Note the realism and charm and the costume of the 
two pages of the Magi. 

And now we come to what is perhaps the most lovely 
picture in the whole gallery, judged purely as colour and 
sweetness and design — No. 1549 — a " Madonna Adoring," 
with Filippino Lippi 's name and an interrogation mark be- 



128 THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

neath it. Who painted it if not Filippino ? That is the ques- 
tion ; but into such problems, which confront one at every 
turn in Florence, I am neither qualified nor anxious to 
enter. When doctors disagree anyone may decide before 
me. The thought, moreover, that always occurs in the pres- 
ence of these good debatable pictures, is that any doubt 
as to their origin merely enriches this already over-rich 
period, since someone had to paint them. Simon not 
pure becomes hardly less remarkable than Simon pure. 

If only the Baby were more pleasing, this would be per- 
haps the most delightful picture in the world : as it is, its 
blues alone lift it to the heavens of delectableness. By an 
unusual stroke of fortune a crack in the paint where the 
panels join has made a star in the tender blue sky. The 
Tuscan landscape is very still and beautiful ; the flowers, 
although conventional and not accurate like Luca's, are as 
pretty as can be ; the one unsatisfying element is the Baby, 
who is a little clumsy and a little in pain, but diffuses 
radiance none the less. And the Mother — the Mother is 
all perfection and winsomeness. Her face and hands are 
exquisite, and the Tuscan twilight behind her is so lovely. 
I have given a reproduction, but colour is essential. 

The remaining three pictures in the room are a Bas- 
tiano and a Pollaiuolo, which are rather for the student 
than the wanderer, and a charming Ignoto, No. 75, which 
I like immensely. But Ignoto nearly always paints well. 

In the Sala di Leonardo are two pictures which bear 
the name of this most fascinating of all the painters of 
the world. One is the Annunciation, No. 1288, upon the 
authenticity of which much has been said and written, and 
the other an unfinished Adoration of the Magi which can- 
not be questioned by anyone. The probabilities are that 
the Annunciation is an early work and that the ascrip- 



LEGNARDO DA VINCI 129 

tion is accurate: at Oxford is a drawing known to be 
Leonardo's that is almost certainly a study for a detail 
of this work, while among the Leonardo drawings in the 
His de la Salle collection at the Louvre is something very 
like a first sketch of the whole. Certainly one can think 
of no one else who could have given the picture its quality, 
which increases in richness with every visit to the gallery ; 
but the workshop of Verrocchio, where Leonardo worked, 
together with Lorenzo di Credi and Perugino, with Andrea 
of the True Eye over all, no doubt put forth wonderful 
things. The Annunciation is unique in the collection, both 
in colour and character : nothing in the Uffizi so deepens. 
There are no cypresses like these in any other picture, no 
finer drawing than that of Mary's hands. Luca's flowers 
are better, in the adjoining room ; one is not too happy 
about the pedestal of the reading-desk ; and there are 
Virgins whom we can like more ; but as a whole it is per- 
haps the most fascinating picture of all, for it has the 
Leonardo darkness as well as light. 

Of Leonardo I could write for ever, but this book is not 
the place ; for though he was a Florentine, Florence has 
very little of his work : these pictures only, and one of 
these only for certain, together with an angel in a work 
by Verrocchio at the Accademia which we shall see, and 
possibly a sculptured figure over the north door of the 
Baptistery. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Francis 
I of France, lured him away, to the eternal loss of his own 
city. It is Milan and Paris that are richest in his work, 
and after that London, which has at South Kensington a 
sculptured relief by him as well as a painting at the 
National Gallery, a cartoon at Burlington House, and 
the British Museum drawings. 

His other work here — No. 1252 — in the grave brown 

K 



ISO THE UFFIZI II : THE FIRST SIX ROOMS 

frame, was to have been Leonardo's greatest picture in 
oil, so Vasari says : larger, in fact, than any known picture 
at that time. Being very indistinct, it is, curiously 
enough, best as the light begins to fail and the beautiful 
wistful faces emerge from the gloom. In their presence 
one recalls Leonardo's remark in one of his notebooks that 
faces are most interesting beneath a troubled sky. "You 
should make your portrait," he adds, "at the hour of the 
fall of the evening when it is cloudy or misty, for the 
light then is perfect." In the background one can discern 
the prancing horses of the Magi's suite ; a staircase with 
figures ascending and descending ; the rocks and trees of 
Tuscany ; and looking at it one cannot but ponder upon 
the fatality which seems to have pursued this divine and 
magical genius, ordaining that almost everything that he 
put forth should be either destroyed or unfinished : his 
work in the Castello at Milan, which might otherwise be 
an eighth wonder of the world, perished ; his "Last Supper " 
at Milan perishing ; his colossal equestrian statue of Fran- 
cesco Sforza broken to pieces ; his sculpture lost ; his 
Palazzo Vecchio battle cartoon perished ; this picture only 
a sketch. Even after long years the evil fate still per- 
sists, for in 1911 his "Gioconda" was stolen from the 
Louvre by madman or knave. 

Among the other pictures in this room is the rather 
hot "Adoration of the Magi," by Cosimo Rosselli (1439- 
1507), over the Leonardo "Annunciation," a glowing scene 
of colour and animation : this Cosimo being the Cosimo 
from whom Piero di Cosimo took his name, and an associ- 
ate of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Luca Signo- 
relli on the Sixtine Chapel frescoes. On the left wall 
is Uccello's battle piece, No. 52, very like that in our 
National Gallery : rich and glorious as decoration, but 




THE ANNUNCIATION 

FROM THE PAINTING BY BOTTICELLI IN THE UFFIZI 



PAOLO UCCELLO 131 

quite bearing out Vasari's statement that Uccello could 
not draw horses. Uccello was a most laborious student of 

i 

animal life and so absorbed in the mysteries of perspective 
that he preferred them to bed ; but he does not seem to 
have been able to unite them. He was a perpetual 
butt of Donatello. It is told of him that having a com- 
mission to paint a fresco for the Mercato Vecchio he kept 
the progress of the work a secret and allowed no one to 
see it. At last, when it was finished, he drew aside the 
sheet for Donatello, who was buying fruit, to admire. 
"Ah, Paolo," said the sculptor reproachfully, "now that 
you ought to be covering it up, you uncover it." 

There remain a superb nude study of Venus by Lorenzo 
di Credi, No. 3452 — one of the pictures which escaped 
Savonarola's bonfire of vanities — and No. 1305, a Virgin 
and Child with various Saints by Domenico Veneziano 
(1400-1461), who taught Gentile da Fabriano, the teacher 
of Jacopo Bellini. This picture is a complete contrast 
to the Uccello : for that is all tapestry, richness, and bellig- 
erence, and this is so pale and gentle, with its lovely 
light green, a rare colour in this gallery. 



CHAPTER X 

THE UFFIZI Hi: BOTTICELLI 

A painter apart — Sandro Filipepi — Artists' names — Piero de' Med- 
ici—The "Adoration of the Magi" — The "Judith" pictures — 
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo and Giuliano's mother — The Tourna- 
ments — The "Birth of Venus" and the "Prima vera" — Simonetta — A 
new star — Sacred pictures — Savonarola and "The Calumny" — The 
National Gallery — Botticelli's old age and death. 

WE come next to the Sala di Botticelli, and such is the 
position held by this painter in the affection of 
visitors to Florence, and such the wealth of works from his 
hand that the Uffizi possesses, that I feel that a single 
chapter may well be devoted to his genius, more particularly 
as many of his pictures were so closely associated with Piero 
de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici. We see Botticelli 
here at his most varied. The Accademia also is very rich 
in his work, having above all the "Prima vera," and in this 
chapter I shall glance at the Accademia pictures too, re- 
turning to them when we reach that gallery in due course. 
Among the great Florentine masters Botticelli stands 
apart by reason not only of the sensitive wistful delicacy 
of his work, but for the profound interest of his personality. 
He is not essentially more beautiful than his friend Filippino 
Lippi or — occasionally — than Fra Lippo Lippi his master ; 
but he is always deeper. One feels that he too felt the 
emotion that his characters display ; he did not merely 

132 



ARTISTS' NAMES 133 

paint, he thought and suffered. Hence his work is dra- 
matic. Again Botticelli had far wider sympathies than 
most of his contemporaries. He was a friend of the Medici, 
a neo-Platonist, a student of theology with the poet Pal- 
mieri, an illustrator of Dante, and a devoted follower of 
Savonarola. Of the part that women played in his life we 
know nothing : in fact we know less of him intimately 
than of almost any of the great painters ; but this we may 
guess, that he was never a happy man. His work falls 
naturally into divisions corresponding to his early devotion 
to Piero de' Medici and his wife Lucrezia Tornabuoni, in 
whose house for a while he lived ; to his interest in their 
sons Lorenzo and Giuliano ; and finally to his belief in 
Savonarola. Sublime he never is ; comforting he never is ; 
but he is everything else. One can never forget in his 
presence the tragedy that attends the too earnest seeker 
after beauty : not "all is vanity" does Botticelli say, but 
"all is transitory." 

Botticelli, as we now call him, was the son of Mariano 
Filipepi and was born in Florence in 1447. According to 
one account he was called Sandro di Botticelli because he 
was apprenticed to a goldsmith of that name ; according 
to another his brother Antonio, a goldsmith, was known 
as Botticello (which means a little barrel), and Sandro 
being with him was called Sandro di Botticello. Whatever 
the cause, the fact remains that the name of Filipepi is 
rarely used. 

And here a word as to the capriciousness of the nomen- 
clature of artists. We know some by their Christian names ; 
some by their surnames ; some by their nicknames ; some 
by the names of their towns, and some by the names 
of their masters. Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, was so 
clever in designing a pretty garland for women's hair that 



134 THE UFFIZI III : BOTTICELLI 

he was called Ghirlandaio, the garland-maker, and his 
painter son Domenico is therefore known for ever as 
Domenico Ghirlandaio. Paolo Doni, a painter of battle 
scenes, was so fond of birds that he was known as Uccello 
(a bird) and now has no other name ; Pietro Vannucci 
coming from Perugia was called Perugino ; Agnolo di 
Francesco di Migliore happened to be a tailor with a genius 
of a son, Andrea ; that genius is therefore Andrea of the 
tailor — del Sarto — for all time. And so forth 

To return to Botticelli. In 1447, when he was born, Fra 
Angelico was sixty ; and Masaccio had been dead for some 
years. At the age of twelve the boy was placed with Fra 
Lippo Lippi, then a man of a little more than fifty, to 
learn painting. That Lippo was his master one may see 
continually, but particularly by comparison of his head- 
dresses with almost any of Botticelli's. Both were minutely 
careful in this detail. But where Lippo was beautifully 
obvious, Sandro was beautifully analytical : he was also, as 
I have said, much more interesting and dramatic. 

Botticelli's best patron was Piero de' Medici, who took 
him into his house, much as his son Lorenzo was to take 
Michelangelo into his, and made him one of the family. 
For Piero, Botticelli always had affection and respect, and 
when he painted his " Fortitude " as one of the Pollaiuoli's 
series of the Virtues for the Mercatanzia (of which several 
are in this gallery), he made the figure symbolize Piero's 
life and character — or so it is possible, if one wishes, to 
believe. But it should be understood that almost nothing 
is known about Botticelli and the origin of his pictures. 
At Piero's request Botticelli painted the " Adoration of the 
Magi " (No. 1286) which was to hang in S. Maria Novella 
as an offering of gratitude for Piero's escape from the con- 
spiracy of Luca Pitti in 1466. Piero had but just succeeded 




THE LOGGIA DE' LANZI, THE DUOMO, AND THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 
FROM THE PORTICO OF THE UFFIZI 



THE CARMINE PORTRAIT 135 

to Cosimo when Pitti, considering him merely an invalid, 
struck his blow. By virtue largely of the young Lorenzo's 
address the attack miscarried : hence the presence of 
Lorenzo in the picture, on the extreme left, with a sword. 
Piero himself in scarlet kneels in the middle ; Giuliano, 
his second son, doomed to an early death by assassination, 
is kneeling on his right. The picture is not only a sacred 
painting but (like the Gozzoli fresco at the Riccardi palace) 
an exaltation of the Medici family. The dead Cosimo is 
at the Child's feet ; the dead Giovanni, Piero's brother, 
stands close to the kneeling Giuliano. Among the other 
persons represented are collateral Medici and certain of 
their friends. 

It is by some accepted that the figure in yellow, on the 
extreme right, looking out of this picture, is Botticelli 
himself. But for a portrait of the painter of more authen- 
ticity we must go to the Carmine, where, in the Brancacci 
chapel, we shall see a fresco by Botticelli's friend Filippino 
Lippi representing the Crucifixion of S. Peter, in which 
our painter is depicted on the right, looking on at the 
scene — a rather coarse heavy face, with a large mouth and 
long hair. He wears a purple cap and red cloak. Vasari 
tells us that Botticelli, although so profoundly thoughtful 
and melancholy in his work, was extravagant, pleasure 
loving, and given to practical jokes. Part at least of this 
might be gathered from observation of Filippino Lippi 's 
portrait of him. According to Vasari it was No. 1286 
which brought Botticelli his invitation to Rome from 
Sixtus IV to decorate the Sixtine Chapel. But that was 
several years later and much was to happen in the in- 
terval. 

The two little " Judith" pictures (Nos. 1156 and 1158) 
were painted for Piero de' Medici and had their place in 



136 THE UFFIZI III : BOTTICELLI 

the Medici palace. In 1494, when Piero di Lorenzo de' 
Medici was banished from Florence and the palace looted, 
they were stolen and lost sight of ; but during the reign 
of Francis I they reappeared and were presented to his wife 
Bianca Capella and once more placed with the Medici 
treasures. No. 1156, the Judith walking springily along, 
sword in hand, having slain the tyrant, is one of the master- 
pieces of paint. Everything about it is radiant, superb, 
and unforgettable. 

One other picture which the young painter made for his 
patron — or in this case his patroness, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, 
Piero's wife —is the "Madonna of the Magnificat," No. 1267, 
with its beautiful children and sweet Madonna, its lovely 
landscape but not too attractive Child. The two boys are 
Lorenzo, on the left, and Giuliano, in yellow. One of their 
sisters leans over them. Here the boys are perhaps, 
in Botticelli's way, typified rather than portrayed. Al- 
though this picture came so early in his career Botticelli 
never excelled its richness, beauty, and depth of feeling, nor 
its liquid delicacy of treatment. Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for 
whom he painted it, was a very remarkable woman, not 
only a good mother to her children and a good wife to 
Piero but a poet and exemplar. She survived Piero by 
thirteen years and her son Giuliano by five. Botticelli 
painted her portrait, which is now in Berlin. 

These pictures are the principal work of Botticelli's first 
period, which coincides with the five years of Piero's rule 
and the period of mourning for him. 

He next appears in what many of his admirers find his 
most fascinating mood, as a joyous allegorist, the picture 
of Venus rising from the sea in this room, the "Prima vera" 
which we shall see at the Accademia, and the "Mars and 
Venus" in our National Gallery, belonging to this epoch. 



SIMONETTA 137 

But in order to understand them we must again go to 
history. Piero was succeeded in 1469 by his son Lorenzo 
the Magnificent, who continued his father's friendship for 
the young painter, now twenty-two years of age. In 1474 
Lorenzo devised for his brother Giuliano a tournament 
in the Piazza of S. Croce very like that which Piero had 
given for Lorenzo on the occasion of his betrothal in 1469 ; 
and Botticelli was commissioned by Lorenzo to make 
pictures commemorating the event. Verrocchio again 
helped with the costumes ; Lucrezia Donati again was 
Queen of the Tournament ; but the Queen of Beauty was 
the sixteen-year-old bride of Marco Vespucci — the lovely 
Simonetta Cattaneo, a lady greatly beloved by all and a 
close friend both of Giuliano and Lorenzo. 

The praises of Lorenzo's tournament had been sung by 
Luca Pulci : Giuliano's were sung by Poliziano, under the 
title "La Giostra di Giuliano de' Medici," and it is this 
poem which Botticelli may be said to have illustrated, for 
both poet and artist employ the same imagery. Thus 
Poliziano, or Politian (of whom we shall hear more in the 
chapter on S. Marco) compares Simonetta to Venus, and 
in stanzas 100 and 101 speaks of her birth, describing 
her blown to earth over the sea by the breath of the 
Zephyrs, and welcomed there by the Hours, one of whom 
offers her a robe. This, Botticelli translates into exquisite 
tempera with a wealth of pretty thoughts. The cornflowers 
and daisies on the Hour's dress are alone a perennial joy. 

Simonetta as Venus has some of the wistfulness of the 
Madonnas ; and not without reason does Botticelli give 
her this expression, for her days were very short. In 
the "Prima vera," which we are to see at the Accademia, 
but which must be described here, we find Simonetta again, 
but we do not see her first. We see first that slender up- 



138 THE UFFIZI III : BOTTICELLI 

right commanding figure, all flowers and youth and con- 
quest, in her lovely floral dress, advancing over the grass- 
like thistle-down. Never before in painting had anything 
been done at once so distinguished and joyous and pagan 
as this. For a kindred emotion one had to go to Greek 
sculpture, but Botticelli, while his grace and joy are Helle- 
nic, was intensely modern too : the problems of the Renais- 
sance, the tragedy of Christianity, equally cloud his brow. 

The symbolism of the "Prima vera" is interesting. 
Glorious Spring is returning to earth — in the presence of 
Venus — once more to make all glad, and with her her 
attendants to dance and sing, and the Zephyrs to bring the 
soft breezes ; and by Spring Botticelli meant the reign 
of Lorenzo, whose tournament motto was "Le temps re- 
vient." Simonetta is again the central figure, and never 
did Botticelli paint more exquisitely than here. Her 
bosom is the prettiest in Florence ; the lining of her robe 
over her right arm has such green and blue and gold as 
never were seen elsewhere ; her golden sandals are delicate 
as gossamer. Over her head a little cupid hovers, directing 
his arrow at Mercury, on the extreme left, beside the three 
Graces. 

In Mercury, who is touching the trees with his caduceus 
and bidding them burgeon, some see Giuliano de' Medici, 
who was not yet betrothed. But when the picture was 
painted both Giuliano and Simonetta were dead : Simon- 
etta first, of consumption, in 1476, and Giuliano, by stabbing, 
in 1478. Lorenzo, who was at Pisa during Simonetta's 
illness, detailed his own physician for her care. On hear- 
ing of her death he walked out into the night and noticed 
for the first time a brilliant star. "See," he said, "either 
the soul of that most gentle lady hath been transferred 
into that new star or else hath it been joined together there- 




SAN GIACOMO 

FROM THE PAINTING BY ANDREA DEL SARIO IN THE UEFIZI 



THE " VENUS AND MARS " 139 

unto. ,, Of Giuliano's end we have read in Chapter II, and 
it was Botticelli, whose destinies were so closely bound up 
with the Medici, who was commissioned to paint portraits 
of the murderous Pazzi to be displayed outside the Palazzo 
Vecchio. 

A third picture in what may be called the tournament 
period is found by some in the "Venus and Mars," No. 915, 
in our National Gallery. Here Giuliano would be Mars, 
and Venus either one woman in particular whom Florence 
wished him to marry, or all women, typified by one, trying 
to lure him from other pre-occupations, such as hunting. 
To make her Simonetta is to go too far ; for she is not like 
the Simonetta of the other pictures, and Simonetta was 
but recently married and a very model of fair repute. In 
No. 916 in the National Gallery is a "Venus with Cupids" 
(which might be by Botticelli and might be by that inter- 
esting painter of whom Mr. Berenson has written so 
attractively as Amico di Sandro), in which Politian's de- 
scription of Venus, in his poem, is again closely followed. 

After the tournament pictures we come in Botticelli's 
career to the Sixtine Chapel frescoes, and on his return to 
Florence to other frescoes, including that lovely one at the 
Villa Lemmi (then the Villa Tornabuoni) which is now on 
the staircase of the Louvre. These are followed by at least 
two more Medici pictures — the portrait of Piero diLorenzo 
de' Medici, in this room, No. 1154, the sad-faced youth 
with the medal ; and the "Pallas and the Centaur" at the 
Pitti, an historical record of Lorenzo's success as a diplo- 
matist when he went to Naples in 1480. 

The latter part of Botticelli's life was spent under the 
influence of Savonarola and in despair at the wickedness 
of the world and its treatment of that prophet. His 
pictures became wholly religious, but it was religion without 



140 THE UFFIZI III: BOTTICELLI 

joy. Never capable of disguising the sorrow that underlies 
all human happiness — or, as I think of it in looking at his 
work, the sense of transience — Botticelli, as age came upon 
him, was more than ever depressed. One has the feel- 
ing that he was persuaded that only through devotion and 
self-negation could peace of mind be gained, and yet for 
himself could find none. The sceptic was too strong in him. 
Savonarola's eloquence could not make him serene, however 
much he may have come beneath its spell. It but served to 
increase his melancholy. Hence these wistful despondent 
Madonnas, all so conscious of the tragedy before their 
Child ; hence these troubled angels and shadowed saints. 

Savonarola was hanged and burned in 1498, and Botti- 
celli paid a last tribute to his friend in the picture in this 
room called "The Calumny." Under the pretence of 
merely illustrating a passage in Lucian, who was one of 
his favourite authors, Botticelli has represented the cam- 
paign against the great reformer. The hall represents 
Florence ; the judge (with the ears of an ass) the Signoria 
and the Pope. Into these ears Ignorance and Suspicion are 
whispering. Calumny, with Envy at her side and tended 
by Fraud and Deception, holds a torch in one hand and 
with the other drags her victim, who personifies (but with no 
attempt at a likeness) Savonarola. Behind are the figures 
of Remorse, cloaked and miserable, and Truth, naked and 
unafraid. The statues in the niches ironically represent 
abstract virtues. Everything in the decoration of the 
palace points to enlightenment and content ; and beyond 
is the calmest and greenest of seas. 

One more picture was Botticelli to paint, and this also 
was to the glory of Savonarola. By good fortune it be- 
longs to the English people and is No. 1034 in the National 
Gallery. It has upon it a Greek inscription in the painter's 



SAVONAROLA 141 

own hand which runs in English as follows : " This picture I, 
Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the 
troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time during the 
fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of 
the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for three years 
and a half. Afterwards he shall be confined, and we shall 
see him trodden down, as in this picture." The loosing of 
the devil was the three years and a half after Savonarola's 
execution on May 23rd, 1498, when Florence was mad with 
reaction from the severity of his discipline. S. John says, 
" I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall 
prophesy " ; the painter makes three, Savonarola having 
had two comrades with him. The picture was intended to 
give heart to the followers of Savonarola and bring promise 
of ultimate triumph. 

After the death of Savonarola, Botticelli became both 
poor and infirm. He had saved no money and all his 
friends were dead — Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo, Giuliano, 
Lucrezia, Simonetta, Filippino Lippi, and Savonarola. 
He hobbled about on crutches for a while, a pensioner of 
the Medici family, and dying at the age of seventy-eight 
was buried in Ognissanti, but without a tombstone for fear 
of desecration by the enemies of Savonarola's adherents. 

Such is the outline of Botticelli's life. We will now 
look at such of the pictures in this room as have not been 
mentioned. 

Entering from the Sala di Leonardo, the first picture 
on the right is the "Birth of Venus." Then the very 
typical circular picture — a shape which has come to be 
intimately associated with this painter — No. 1289, "The 
Madonna of the Pomegranate," one of his most beautiful 
works, and possibly yet another designed for Lucrezia 
Tornabuoni, for the curl on the forehead of the boy to the 



142 THE UFFIZI III : BOTTICELLI 

left of the Madonna — who is more than usually troubled 
— is very like that for which Giuliano de' Medici was 
famous. This is a very lovely work, although its colour is 
a little depressed. Next is the most remarkable of the 
Piero de' Medici pictures, which I have already touched 
upon — No. 1286, "The Adoration of the Magi," as different 
from the Venus as could be : the Venus so cool and trans- 
parent, and this so hot and rich, with its haughty Florentines 
and sumptuous cloaks. Above it is No. 23, a less subtle 
group — the Madonna, the Child and angels — difficult to 
see. And then comes the beautiful " Magnificat," which we 
know to have been painted for Lucrezia Tornabuoni and 
which shall here introduce a passage from Pater : " For 
with Botticelli she too, although she holds in her hands 
the * Desire of all nations/ is one of those who are neither 
for Jehovah nor for His enemies ; and her choice is on her 
face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless 
from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and 
the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness 
of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the 
mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and 
who has already that sweet look of devotion which men 
have never been able altogether to love, and which still 
makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his 
earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to 
transcribe in a book the words of her exaltation, the 'Ave/ 
and the 'Magnificat/ and the 'Gaude Maria/ and the 
young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from her 
devotion, are eager to hold the ink-horn and to support 
the book. But the pen almost drops from her hand, and 
the high cold words have no meaning for her, and her 
true children are those others among whom, in her rude 
home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look 



THE " ANNUNCIATION " 143 

of wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in 
startled animals — gipsy children, such as those who, in 
Apennine villages, still hold out their long brown arms to 
beg of you, with their thick black hair nicely combed, and 
fair white linen on their sunburnt throats." 

The picture's frame is that which was made for it four 
hundred and fifty years ago : by whom, I cannot say, but it 
was the custom at that time for the painter himself to be 
responsible also for the frame. 

The glory of the end wall is the " Annunciation," a work 
that may perhaps not wholly please at first, the cause 
largely of the vermilion on the floor, but in the end con- 
quers. The hands are among the most beautiful in existence, 
and the landscape, with its one tree and its fairy architec- 
ture, is a continual delight. Among "Annunciations," as 
among pictures, it stands very high. It has more of sophisti- 
cation than most: the Virgin not only recognizes the honour, 
but the doom, which the painter himself foreshadows in the 
predella, where Christ is seen rising from the grave. None 
of Fra Angelico's simple radiance here, and none of Fra 
Lippo Lippi's glorified matter-of-fact. Here is tragedy. 
The painting of the Virgin's head-dress is again marvellous. 
The picture is reproduced in this book. 

Next the " Annunciation " on the left is, to my eyes, one 
of Botticelli's most attractive works : No. 1303, just the 
Madonna and Child again, in a niche, with roses climbing 
behind them : the Madonna one of his youngest, and more 
placid and simple than most, with more than a hint of the 
Verrocchio type in her face. To the " School of Botticelli " 
this is sometimes attributed : it may be rightly. Its pen- 
dant is another " Madonna and Child," No. 76, more 
like Lippo Lippi and very beautiful in its darker graver 
way. 



144 THE UFFIZI III : BOTTICELLI 

The other wall has the "Fortitude," the "Calumny," 
and the two little "Judith and Holof ernes" pictures. 
Upon the "Fortitude," to which I have already alluded, 
it is well to look at Ruskin, who, however, was not aware 
that the artist intended any symbolic reference to the 
character and career of Piero de' Medici. The criticism 
is in "Mornings in Florence," and it is followed by some 
fine pages on the "Judith." The "Justice," "Prudence," 
and "Charity" of the Pollaiuolo brothers, belonging to 
the same series as the "Fortitude," are also here ; but after 
the "Fortitude" one does not look at them. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

S. Zenobius — Piero della Francesca — Federigo da Montefeltro — 
Melozzo" da Forli — The Tribuna — Raphael — Re-arrangement — The 
gems — The self-painted portraits — A northern room — Hugo van der 
Goes — Tommaso Portinari — The sympathetic Memling — Rubens 
riotous — Vittoria della Rovere — Baroccio — Honthorst — Giovanni 
the indiscreet — The Medusa — Medici miniatures — Hercules Seghers 
— The Sala di Niobe — Beautiful antiques. 

PASSING from the Sala di Botticelli through the Sala 
di Lorenzo Monaco and the first Tuscan rooms to 
the corridor, we come to the second Tuscan room, which 
is dominated by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), whose 
"Madonna and Child," with "S. Francis and S. John the 
Evangelist" — No. 112 — is certainly the favourite picture 
here, as it is, in reproduction, in so many homes ; but, 
apart from the Child, I like far better the "S. Giacomo" — 
No. 1254 — so sympathetic and rich in colour, which is 
reproduced in this volume. Another good Andrea is No. 93 
— a soft and misty apparition of Christ to the Magdalen. 
The Sodoma (1477-1549) on the easel — "S. Sebastian," 
No. 1279 — is very beautiful in its Leonardesque hues and 
romantic landscape, and the two Ridolfo Ghirlandaios 
(1483-1561) near it are interesting as representing, with 
much hard force, scenes in the story of S. Zenobius, of 
Florence, of whom we read in Chapter II. In one he re- 

L 145 



146 THE UFFIZI IV: REMAINING ROOMS 

stores life to the dead child in the midst of a Florentine 
crowd; in the other his bier, passing the Baptistery, re- 
animates the dead tree. Giotto's tower and the tower of 
the Palazzo Vecchio are to be seen on the left. A very 
different picture is the Cosimo Rosselli, No. 1280 bis, a 
comely "Madonna and Saints," with a motherly thought 
in the treatment of the bodice. 

Among the other pictures is a naked sprawling scene of 
bodies and limbs by Cosimo I's favourite painter, Bronzino 
(1502-1572), called "The Saviour in Hell, ,, and two nice 
Medici children from the same brush, which was kept busy 
both on the living and ancestral lineaments of that family ; 
two Filippino Lippis, both fine if with a little too much 
colour for this painter : one — No. 1257 — approaching 
the hotness of a Ghirlandaio carpet piece, but a great 
feat of crowded activity ; the other, No. 1268, having a 
beautiful blue Madonna and a pretty little cherub with a 
red book. Piero di Cosimo is here, religious and not 
mythological ; and here are a very straightforward and 
satisfying Mariotto Albertinelli — the " Virgin and S. 
Elizabeth," very like a Fra Bartolommeo ; a very rich 
and beautiful " Deposition " by Botticini, one of Ver- 
rocchio's pupils, with a gay little predella underneath it, 
and a pretty " Holy Family " by Franciabigio. But 
Andrea remains the king of the walls. 

From this Sala a little room is gained which I advise 
all tired visitors to the Uffizi to make their harbour of 
refuge and recuperation; for it has only three or four 
pictures in it and three or four pieces of sculpture and 
some pleasant maps and tapestry on the walls, and from its 
windows you look across the brown-red tiles to S. Miniato. 
The pictures, although so few, are peculiarly attractive, 
being the work of two very rare hands, Piero della Fran- 




THE MADONNA DEL CARDELLINO (OF THE CHAFFINCH) 

BY RAPHAEL IN THE UFFIZI 



FEDERIGO DA MONTEFELTRO 147 

cesca (? 1398-1492) and Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494). 
Melozzo has here a very charming Annunciation in two 
panels, the fascination of which I cannot describe. That 
they are fascinating there is, however, no doubt. We have 
symbolical figures by him in our National Gallery — again 
hanging next to Piero della Francesca — but they are not 
the equal of these in charm, although very charming. 
These grow more attractive with every visit : the eager 
advancing angel with his lily, and the timid little Virgin 
in her green dress, with folded hands. 

The two Pieros are, of course, superb. Piero never 
painted anything that was not distinguished and liquid, 
and here he gives us of his best : portraits of Federigo da 
Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and Battista, his second 
Duchess, with classical scenes behind them. Piero della 
Francesca has ever been one of my favourite painters, and 
here he is wholly a joy. Of his works Florence has but few, 
since he was not a Florentine, nor did he work here, being 
engaged chiefly at Urbino, Ferrara, Arezzo, and Rome. 
His life ended sadly, for he became totally blind. In ad- 
dition to his painting he was a mathematician of much 
repute. The Duke of Urbino here depicted is Federigo da 
Montefeltro, who ruled from 1444 to 1482, and in 1459 
married as his second wife a daughter of Alessandro Sforza, 
of Pesaro, the wedding being the occasion of Piero's pic- 
tures. The duke stands out among the many Italian lords 
of that time as a humane and beneficent ruler and collector, 
and eager to administer well. He was a born fighter, and 
it was owing to the loss of his right eye and the fracture of 
his noble old nose that he is seen here in such a determined 
profile against the lovely light over the Umbrian hills. The 
symbolical chariots in the landscape at the back represent 
respectively the Triumph of Fame (the Duke's) and the 



148 THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

Triumph of Chastity (that of the Duchess). The Duke's 
companions are Victory, Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and 
Temperance ; the little Duchess's are Love, Hope, Faith, 
Charity, and Innocence; and if these are not exquisite 
pictures I never saw any. 

The statues in the room should not be missed, particu- 
larly the little Genius of Love, the Bacchus and Ampelos, 
and the spoilt little comely boy supposed to represent — 
and quite conceivably — the infant Nero. 

Crossing the large Tuscan room again, we come to a 
little narrow room filled with what are now called cabinet 
pictures : far too many to study properly, but comprising 
a benignant old man's head, No. 1167, which is sometimes 
called a Filippino Lippi and sometimes a Masaccio, a frag- 
ment of a fresco ; a boy from the serene perfect hand of 
Perugino, No. 1217 ; two little panels by Fra Bartolommeo 
— No. 1161 — painted for a tabernacle to hold a Donatello 
relief and representing the Circumcision and Nativity, in 
colours, and at the back a pretty Annunciation in mono- 
chrome; No. 1235, on the opposite wall, a very sweet 
Mother and Child by the same artist ; a Perseus liberating 
Andromeda, by Piero di Cosimo, No. 1312; two or three 
Lorenzo di Credis ; two or three Alloris ; a portrait of 
Galeazzo Maria Sf orza, by Antonio Pollaiuolo ; and three 
charming little scenes from the lives of S. John the Baptist 
and the Virgin, by Fra Angelico, which belong properly to 
the predella of an altar-piece that we saw in the first room 
we entered — No. 1290, "The Coronation of the Virgin." 
No. 1162 has the gayest green dress in it imaginable. 

And here we enter the Tribuna, which is to the Uffizi 
what the Salon Carre is to the Louvre : the special treasure- 
room of the gallery, holding its most valuable pictures. 
But to-day there are as good works outside it as in ; for the 



THE TRIBUNA 149 

Michelangelo has been moved to another room, and Botti- 
celli (to name no other) is not represented here at all. 
Probably the statue famous as the Venus de' Medici would 
be considered the Tribuna's chief possession ; but not by 
me. Nor should I vote either for Titian's Venus. In 
sculpture I should choose rather the "Knife-sharpener," 
and among the pictures Raphael's "Madonna del Cardel- 
lino," No. 1129. But this is not to suggest that every- 
thing is not a masterpiece, for it is. Beginning at the door 
leading- from the room of the little pictures, we find, on our 
left, Raphael's "Ignota," No. 1120, so rich and unfeeling, 
and then Francia's portrait of Evangelista Scappi, so rich 
and real and a picture that one never forgets. Raphael's 
Julius II comes next, not so powerful as the version in the 
Pitti, and above that Titian's famous Venus. In Peru- 
gino's portrait of Francesco delle Opere, No. 287, we find 
an evening sky and landscape still more lovely than 
Francia's. This Francesco was brother of Giovanni delle 
Corniole, a protege of Lorenzo de' Medici, famous as a 
carver of intaglios, whose portrait of Savonarola in this 
medium, now preserved in the Uffizi, in the Gem Room, 
was said by Michelangelo to carry art to its farthest pos- 
sible point. 

A placid and typical Perugino — the Virgin and two 
saints — comes next, and then a northern air sweeps in 
with Van Dyck's Giovanni di Montfort, now darkening 
into gloom but very fine and commanding. Titian's 
second Venus is above, for which his daughter Lavinia 
acted as model (the Venus of the other version being pos- 
sibly the Marchesa della Rovere), and under it is the only 
Luini in the Uffizi, unmistakably from the sweet hand and 
full of Leonardesque influence. Beneath this is a rich and 
decorative work of the Veronese school, a portrait of Eliza- 



150 THE UFFIZI IV: REMAINING ROOMS 

betta Gonzaga, with another evening sky. Then we go 
north again, to Durer's Adoration of the Magi, a picture 
full of pleasant detail — a little mountain town here, a 
knight in difficulties with his horse there, two butterflies 
close to the Madonna — and interesting also for the treat- 
ment of the main theme in Diirer's masterly careful way ; 
and then to Spain to Spagnoletto's "S. Jerome" in sombre 
chiaroscuro; then north again to a painfully real Christ 
crowned with thorns, by Lucas van Leyden, and the 
mousy, Reynoldsy, first wife of Peter Paul Rubens, while 
a Van Dyck portrait under a superb Domenichino and an 
"Adam and Eve" by Lucas Cranach complete the north- 
ern group. And so we come to the two Correggios — so 
accomplished and rich and untouching — all delightful 
virtuosity without feeling. The favourite is, of course, 
No. 1134, for its adorable Baby, whose natural charm 
atones for its theatrical Mother. 

On the other side of the door is No. 1129, the perfect 
" Madonna del Cardellino " of Raphael, so called from the 
goldfinch that the little boys are caressing. This, one is 
forced to consider one of the perfect pictures of the world, 
even though others may communicate more pleasure. The 
landscape is so exquisite and the mild sweetness of the 
whole work so complete ; and yet, although the technical 
mastery is almost thrilling, the "Madonna del Pozzo" by 
Andrea del Sarto's friend Franciabigio, close by — No. 
1125 — arouses infinitely livelier feelings in the observer, 
so much movement and happiness has it. Raphael is 
perfect but cold; Franciabigio is less perfect (although 
exceedingly accomplished) but warm with life. The 
charm of this picture is as notable as the skill of Raphael's : 
it is wholly joyous, and the little Madonna really once 
lived. Both are reproduced in this volume. Raphael's 



THE ROMAN MATRON 151 

neighboring youthful "John the Baptist" is almost 
a Giorgione for richness, but is as truly Raphael as the 
Sebastian del Piombo, once (like the Franciabigio also) 
called a Raphael, is not. How it came to be considered 
Raphael, except that there may be a faint likeness to the 
Fornarina, is a mystery. 

The rooms next the Tribuna have for some time been 
under reconstruction, and of these I say little, nor of 
what pictures are to be placed there. But with the Tri- 
buna, in any case, the collection suddenly declines, begins 
to crumble. The first of these rooms, in the spring of 
this year, 1912, was opened with a number of small 
Italian paintings ; but they are probably only temporarily 
there. Chief among them was a Parmigianino, a Bolt- 
raffio, a pretty little Guido Reni, a Cosimo Tura, a Lorenzo 
Costa, but nothing really important. 

In the tiny Gem Room at the end of the corridor are 
wonders of the lapidary's art — and here is the famous 
intaglio portrait of Savonarola — but they want better 
treatment. The vases and other ornaments should have 
the light all round them, as in the Galerie d'Apollon at the 
Louvre. These are packed together in wall cases and are 
hard to see. 

Passing through the end corridor, where the beautiful 
Matrona reclines so placidly on her couch against the 
light, and where we have such pleasant views of the Ponte 
Vecchio, the Trinita bridge, the Arno, and the Apennines, so 
fresh and real and soothing after so much paint, we come to 
the rooms containing the famous collection of self-painted 
portraits, which, moved hither from Rome, has been accu- 
mulating in the Ufiizi for many years and is still growing, 
to be invited to contribute to it being one of the highest 
honours a painter can receive. The portraits occupy eight 



152 THE UFFIZI IV: REMAINING ROOMS 

rooms and a passage. Though the collection is historically 
and biographically valuable, it contains for every interest- 
ing portrait three or four dull ones, and thus becomes some- 
thing of a weariness. Among the best are Lucas Cranach, 
Anton More, Van Dyck, Rembrandt (three), Rubens, Sey- 
bold, Jordaens, Reynolds, and Romney, all of which remind 
us of Michelangelo's dry comment, "Every painter draws 
himself well." Among the most interesting to us, wander- 
ing in Florence, are the two Andreas, one youthful and the 
other grown fatter than one likes and very different 
from the melancholy romantic figure in the Pitti ; Verroc- 
chio, by Lorenzo di Credi ; Carlo Dolci, surprising by its 
good sense and humour; Raphael, angelic, wistful, and 
weak ; Tintoretto, old and powerful ; and Jacopo Bassano, 
old and simple. Among the moderns, Corot's portrait of 
himself is one of the most memorable, but Fantin Latour, 
Flandrin, Leon Bonnat, and Lenbach are all strong and 
modest; which one cannot say of our own Leighton. 
Among the later English heads Orchardson's is notable, 
but Mr. Sargent's is disappointing. 

We now come to one of the most remarkable rooms 
in the gallery, where every picture is a gem ; but since all 
are northern pictures, imported, I give no reproductions. 
This is the Sala di Van der Goes, so called from the great 
work here, the triptych, painted in 1474 to 1477 by Hugo 
van der Goes, who died in 1482, and was born at Ghent or 
Ley den about 1405 . This painter, of whose genius there can 
be no question, is supposed to have been a pupil of the 
Van Eycks. Not much is known of him save that he 
painted at Bruges and Ghent and in 1476 entered a con- 
vent at Brussels where he was allowed to dine with dis- 
tinguished strangers who came to see him and where he 
drank so much wine that his natural excitability turned to 



HUGO VAN DER GOES 153 

insanity. He seems, however, to have recovered, and if ever 
a picture showed few signs of a deranged or inflamed mind 
it is this, which was painted for the agent of the Medici 
bank at Bruges, Tommaso Portinari, who presented it to 
the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova in his native city of 
Florence, which had been founded by his ancestor Folco, the 
father of Dante's Beatrice. The left panel shows Tommaso 
praying with his two sons Antonio and Pigallo, the right 
his wife Maria Portinari and their adorably quaint little 
daughter with her charming head-dress and costume. The 
flowers in the centre panel are among the most beauti- 
ful things in any Florentine picture : not wild and way- 
ward like Luca Signorelli's, but most exquisitely done : 
irises, red lilies, columbines, and dark red clove pinks — all 
unexpected and all very unlikely to be in such a wintry 
landscape at all. On the ground are violets. The whole 
work is grave, austere, cool, and as different as can be 
from the Tuscan spirit; yet it is said to have had a deep 
influence on the painters of the time and must have drawn 
throngs to the Hospital to see it. 

The other Flemish and German pictures in the room are 
all remarkable and all warmer in tone. No. 906, an un- 
known work, is perhaps the finest : a Crucifixion, which 
might have borrowed its richness from the Carpaccio we 
saw in the Venetian room. There is a fine Adoration of 
the Magi, by Gerard David (1460-1523) ; an unknown por- 
trait of Pierantonio Baroncelli and his wife, with a lovely 
landscape ; a jewel of paint by Hans Memling (1425-1492) 
— No. 703 — the Madonna Enthroned ; a masterpiece of 
drawing by Diirer, "Calvary" ; an austere and poignant 
Transportation of Christ to the Sepulchre, by Roger van der 
Weyden (1400-1464) ; and several very beautiful portraits 
by Memling, notably Nos. 769 and 780 with their lovely 



154 THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

evening light. Memling, indeed, I never liked better than 
here. Other fine pictures are a Spanish prince by Lucas van 
Leyden ; an old Dutch scholar by an artist unknown, No. 
784 ; and a young husband and wife by Joost van Cleef 
the Elder, and a Breughel the Elder, like an old Crome — a 
beauty — No. 928. The room is interesting both for itself 
and also as showing how the Flemish brushes were working 
at the time that so many of the great Italians were 
engaged on similar themes. 

After the cool, self contained, scientific work of these 
northerners it is a change to enter the Sala di Rubens and 
find that luxuriant giant — their compatriot, but how 
different ! — once more. In the Uffizi, Rubens seems more 
foreign, far, than any one, so fleshly pagan is he. In 
Antwerp cathedral his " Descent from the Cross," although 
its bravura is, as always with him, more noticeable than its 
piety, might be called a religious picture, but I doubt if 
even that would seem so here. At any rate his Uffizi works 
are all secular, while his "Holy Family" in the Pittiis merely 
domestic and robust. His Florentine masterpieces are the 
two Henri IV pictures in this room, "Henri IV at Ivry," 
magnificent if not war, and "Henri's entry into Paris 
after Ivry," with its confusing muddle of naked warriors 
and spears. Only Rubens could have painted these 
spirited, impossible, glorious things, which for all their 
greatness send one's thoughts back longingly to the portrait 
of his wife, in the Tribuna, while No. 216 — the Baccha- 
nale — is so coarse as almost to send one's feet there too. 

Looking round the room, after Rubens has been dismissed, 
it is too evident that the best of the Uffizi collection is 
behind us. There are interesting portraits here, but bio- 
graphically rather than artistically. Here are one or two 
fine Sustermans' (1597-1681), that imported painter whom 




THE MADONNA DEL POZZO (OF THE WELL) 

FROM TELE PAINTING BY FRANCIABIGIO IN THE UFFIZI 



VITTORIA DELLA ROVERE 155 

we shall find in such rare form at the Pitti. Here, for 
example, is Ferdinand II, who did so much for the Uffizi 
and so little for Galileo ; and his cousin and wife Vittoria 
della Rovere, daughter of Claudia de' Medici (whose por- 
trait, No. 763, is on the easel) and Federigo della Rovere, 
Duke of Urbino. This silly, plump lady had been married 
at the age of fourteen, and she brought her husband a little 
money and many pictures from Urbino, notably those 
delightful portraits of an earlier Duke and Duchess of Ur- 
bino by Piero della Francesca, and also the two Titian 
"Venuses" in the Tribuna. Ferdinand II and his Grand 
Duchess were on bad terms for most of their lives, and she 
behaved foolishly, and brought up her son Cosimo III fool- 
ishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Suster- 
mans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in 
return he painted her not only as herself but in various 
unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin and even 
the Madonna. 

Here also is No. 196, Van Dyck's portrait of Margherita 
of Lorraine, whose daughter became Cosimo Ill's wife — 
a mischievous, weak face but magnificently painted ; and 
No. 1536, a vividly-painted elderly widow by Jordaens 
(1593-1678) ; and on each side of the outrageous Rubens a 
distinguished Dutch gentleman and lady by the placid, 
refined Mierevelt. 

The two priceless rooms devoted to Iscrizioni come next, 
but we will finish the pictures first and therefore pass 
on to the Sala di Baroccio. Federigo Baroccio (1528-1612) 
is one of the later painters for whom I, at any rate, 
cannot feel any enthusiasm. His position in the Uffizi is 
due rather to the circumstance that he was a protege of 
the Cardinal della Rovere at Rome, whose collection came 
here, than to his genius. This room again is of interest 



156 THE UFFIZI IV: REMAINING ROOMS 

rather historically than artistically. Here, for example, 
are some good Medici portraits by Bronzino, among them 
the famous Eleanora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, in a 
rich brocade (in which she was buried), with the little staring 
Ferdinand I beside her, Eleanora, as we saw in Chapter V, 
was the first mistress of the Pitti palace, and the lady who 
so disliked Cellini and got him into such trouble through 
his lying tongue. Bronzino's little Maria de' Medici — No. 
1164 — is more pleasing, for the other picture has a sinister 
air. This child, the first-born of Cosimo I and Eleanora, 
died when only sixteen. Baroccio has a fine portrait — 
Francesco Maria II, last Duke of Urbino, and the grand- 
father of the Vittoria della Rovere whom we saw in the 
Sala di Rubens. Here also is a portrait of Lorenzo the 
Magnificent by Vasari, but it is of small value since 
Vasari was not born till after Lorenzo's death. The Gal- 
ileo by Sustermans — No. 163 — on the contrary would be 
from life ; and after the Tribuna portrait of Rubens' first 
wife it is interesting to find here his pleasant portrait of 
Helen Fourment, his second. To my eyes two of the 
most attractive pictures in the room are the Young Sculp- 
tor — No. 1266 — by Bronzino, and the version of Leo- 
nardo's S. Anne at the Louvre by Andrea Salaino of 
Milan (1483 P-1520 ?). I like also the hints of tenderness 
of Bernardino Luini which break through the hardness of 
the Aurelio Luini picture — No. 204. For the rest there 
are some sickly Guido Renis and Carlo Dolcis and a 
sentimental Guercino. 

But the most popular works — on Sundays — are the two 
Gerard Honthorsts, and not without reason, for they 
are dramatic and bold and vivid, and there is a Baby in 
each that goes straight to the maternal heart. No. 157 is 
perhaps the more satisfying, but I have more reason to 



GERARD OF THE NIGHT 157 

remember the larger one — the Adoration of the Shep- 
herds — for I watched a copyist produce a most remark- 
able replica of it in something under a week, on the same 
scale. He was a short, swarthy man with a neck like a 
bull's, and he carried the task off with astonishing brio, 
never drawing a line, finishing each part as he came to it, 
and talking to a friend or an official the whole time. 
Somehow one felt him to be precisely the type of copyist 
that Gherardo della Notte ought to have. This painter 
was born at Utrecht in 1590 but went early to Italy, and 
settling in Rome devoted himself to mastering the methods 
of Amerighi, better known as Caravaggio (1569-1609), who 
specialized in strong contrasts of light and shade. After 
learning all he could in Rome, Honthorst returned to 
Holland and made much money and fame, for his hand was 
swift and sure. Charles I engaged him to decorate White- 
hall. He died in 1656. These two Honthorsts are, as I 
say, the most popular of the pictures on Sunday, when the 
Uffizi is free; but their supremacy is challenged by the 
five inlaid tables, one of which, chiefly in lapis lazuli, must 
be the bluest thing on earth. 

Passing for the present the Sala di Niobe, we come to the 
Sala di Giovanni di San Giovanni, which is given to a 
second-rate painter who was born in 1599 and died in 
1636. His best work is a fresco at the Badia of Fiesole. 
Here he has some theatrical things, including one picture 
which sends English ladies out blushing. Here also are some 
Lelys, including "Nelly Gwynn." Next are two rooms, 
one leading from the other, given to German and Flemish 
pictures and to miniatures, both of which are interesting. 
In the first are more Durers, and that alone would make it 
a desirable resort. Here is a "Virgin and Child" — No. 
851 — very naive and homely, and the beautiful portrait of 



158 THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

his father — No. 766 — a symphony of brown and green. 
Less attractive works from the same hand are the "Apostle 
Philip" — No. 777 — and "S. Giacomo Maggiore," an old 
man very coarsely painted by comparison with the artist's 
father. Here also is a very beautiful portrait of Richard 
Southwell, by Holbein, with the peacock-green background 
that we know so well and always rejoice to see ; a typical 
candle-light Schalcken, No. 800 ; several golden Poelen- 
burghs; an anonymous portrait of Virgilius von Hytta 
of Zuicham, No. 784; a clever smiling lady by Suster- 
mans, No. 709 ; the Signora Puliciani and her husband, 
No. 699 ; a rather crudely coloured Rubens — "Venus and 
Adonis" — No. 812 ; the same artist's "Three Graces," in 
monochrome, very naked; and some quaint portraits by 
Lucas Cranach. 

But no doubt to many persons the most enchaining 
picture here is the Medusa's head, which used to be called 
a Leonardo and quite satisfied Ruskin of its genuine- 
ness, but is now attributed to the Flemish school. The 
head, at any rate, would seem to be very similar to that of 
which Vasari speaks, painted by Leonardo for a peasant, 
but retained by his father. Time has dealt hardly with 
the paint, and one has to study minutely before Medusa's 
horrors are visible. Whether Leonardo's or not, it is not 
uninteresting to read how the picture affected Shelley when 
he saw it here in 1818 : — 

... Its Horror and its Beauty are divine. 
Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie 
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine. 
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, 
The agonies of anguish and of death. 

The little room leading from this one should be neglected 
by no one interested in Medicean history, for most of the 




FIESOLE FROM THE HILL UNDER THE MONASTERY 



DUTCH PICTURES 159 

family Is here, in miniature, by Bronzino's hand. Here also 
are miniatures by other great painters, such as Pourbus, 
Guido Reni, Bassano, Clouet, Holbein. Look particularly 
at No. 3382, a woman with brown hair, in purple — a most 
fascinating little picture. The Ignota in No. 3348 might 
easily be Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I of England. 
The other exhibits are copies in miniature of famous pic- 
tures, notable among them a Raphael — No. 3386 — and a 
Breughel — No. 3445 — while No. 3341, the robing of a 
monk, is worth attention. 

We come now to the last pictures of the collection — 
in three little rooms at the end, near the bronze sleeping 
Cupid. Those in the first room were being rearranged when 
I was last here; the others contain Dutch works notable 
for a few masterpieces. There are too many Poelenburghs, 
but the taste shown as a whole is good. Perhaps to the 
English enthusiast for painting the fine landscape by 
Hercules Seghers will, in view of the recent agitation over 
Lord Lansdowne's Rembrandt, "The Mill," — ascribed in 
some quarters to Seghers — be the most interesting pic- 
ture of all. It is a sombre, powerful scene of rugged coast 
which any artist would have been proud to sign ; but it in 
no way recalls "The Mill's" serene strength. Among 
the best of its companions are a very good Terburg, a very 
good Metsu, and an extremely beautiful Ruysdael. 

And so we are at the end of the pictures — but only to 
return again and again — and are not unwilling to fall into 
the trap of the official who sits here, and allow him to un- 
lock the door behind the Laocoon group and enjoy what 
he recommends as a "bella vista" from the open space, 
which turns out to be the roof of the Loggia de' Lanzi. 
From this high point one may see much of Florence and its 
mountains, while, on looking down, over the coping, one 



160 THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

finds the busy Piazza della Signoria below, with all its cabs 
and wayfarers. 

Returning to the gallery, we come quickly on the right 
to the first of the neglected statuary rooms, the beautiful 
Sala di Niobe, which contains some interesting Medicean 
and other tapestries, and the sixteen statues of Niobe and 
her children from the Temple of Apollo, which the Cardinal 
Ferdinand de' Medici acquired, and which were for many 
years at the Villa Medici at Rome. A suggested recon- 
struction of the group will be found by the door. I can- 
not pretend to a deep interest in the figures, but I like to 
be in the room. The famous Medicean vase is in the 
middle of it. Sculpture more ingratiating is close by, in 
the two rooms given to Iscrizioni : a collection of priceless 
antiques which are not only beautiful but peculiarly in- 
teresting in that they can be compared with the work of 
Donatello, Verrocchio, and other of the Renaissance sculp- 
tors. For in such a case comparisons are anything but 
odious and become fascinating. In the first room there is, 
for example, a Mercury, isolated on the left, in marble, 
who is a blood relation of Donatello's bronze David in the 
Bargello; and certain reliefs of merry children, on the 
right, low down, as one approaches the second room, are 
cousins of the same sculptor's cantoria romps. Not that 
Donatello ever reproduced the antique spirit as Michel- 
angelo nearly did in his Bacchus, and Sansovino absolutely 
did in his Bacchus, both at the Bargello : Donatello was 
of his time, and the spirit of his time animates his creations, 
but he had studied the Greek art in Rome and profited by 
his lessons, and his evenly-balanced humane mind had a 
warm corner for pagan joyfulness. Among other statues 
in this first room is a Sacerdotessa, wearing a marble robe 
with long folds, whose hands can be seen through the 



TRUE ANTIQUES 161 

drapery. Opposite the door are Bacchus and Ampelos, 
superbly pagan, while a sleeping Cupid is most lovely. 
Among the various fine heads is one of Cicero, of an Un- 
known — No. 377 — and of Homer in bronze (called by the 
photographers Aristophanes). But each thing in turn is 
almost the best. The trouble is that the Uffizi is so vast, 
and the Renaissance seems to be so eminently the only 
proper study of mankind when one is here, that to attune 
oneself to the enjoyment of antique sculpture needs a 
special effort which not all are ready to make. 

In the centre of the next room is the punctual Her- 
maphrodite without which no large Continental gallery is 
complete. But more worthy of attention is the torso of a 
faun on the left, on a revolving pedestal which (unlike 
those in the Bargello, as we shall discover) really does 
revolve and enables you to admire the perfect back. There 
is also a torso in basalt or porphyry which one should 
study from all points, and on the walls some wonderful 
portions of a frieze from the Ara Pacis, erected in Rome, 
B.C. 13-9, with wonderful figures of men, women, and 
children on it. Among the heads is a colossal Alexander, 
very fine indeed, a beautiful Antoninus, a benign and silly 
Roman lady in whose existence one can quite believe, and 
a melancholy Seneca. Look also at Nos. 330 and 332, on 
the wall : 330, a charming genius, carrying one of Jove's 
thunderbolts ; and 332, a boy who is sheer Luca della 
Robbia centuries before his birth. 

I ought to add that, in addition to the various salons in 
the Uffizi, the long corridors are hung with pictures too, in 
chronological order, the earliest of all being to the right of 
the entrance door, and in the corridors there is also some 
admirable statuary. But the pictures here, although not 
the equal of those in the rooms, receive far too little atten- 

M 



162 THE UFFIZI IV : REMAINING ROOMS 

tion, while the sculpture receives even less, whether the 
beautiful full length athletes or the reliefs on the cisterns, 
several of which have riotous Dionysian processions. On 
the stairs, too, are some very beautiful works; while at 
the top, in the turnstile room, is the original of the boar 
which Tacca copied in bronze for the Mercato Nuovo, and 
just outside it are the Medici who were chiefly concerned 
with the formation of the collection. On the first landing, 
nearest the ground, is a very beautiful and youthful 
Bacchus. 

The ceilings of the Uffizi rooms and corridors also are 
painted, thoughtfully and dexterously, in the Pompeian 
manner ; but there are limits to the receptive capacity of 
travellers' eyes, and I must plead guilty to consistently 
neglecting them. 



CHAPTER XII 



AERIAL FIESOLE 



Andrea del Sarto — Fiesole sights — The Villa Palmieri and the "De- 
cameron " — Botticini's picture in the National Gallery — S. Francesco — 
The Roman amphitheatre — The Etruscan museum — A sculptor's walk 

— The Badia di Fiesole — Brunelleschi again — Giovanni di San Giovanni. 

AFTER all these pictures, how about a little climbing ? 
From so many windows in Florence, along so 
many streets, from so many loggias and towers, and per- 
haps, above all, from the Piazzale di Michelangelo, 
Fiesole is to be seen on her hill, with the beautiful cam- 
panile of her church in the dip between the two eminences, 
that very soon one comes to feel that this surely is the 
promised land. Florence lies so low, and the delectable 
mountain is so near and so alluring. But I am not sure 
that to dream of Fiesole as desirable, and to murmur its 
beautiful syllables, is not best. 

Let me sit 
Here by the window with your hand in mine, 
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole 

— that was Andrea's way and not an unwise one. For 
Fiesole at nearer view can easily disappoint. It is beauti- 
fully set on its hill and it has a fascinating past ; but the 
journey thither on foot is very wearisome, by the electric 
tram vexatious and noisy, and in a horse-drawn carriage 
expensive and cruel ; and when you are there you become 

163 



164 "AERIAL FIESOLE" 

once more a tourist without alleviation and are pestered by 
beggars, and by nice little girls who ought to know better, 
whose peculiar importunacy it is to thrust flowers into the 
hand or buttonhole without any denial. What should 
have been a mountain retreat from the city has become a 
kind of Devil's Dyke. But if one is resolute, and, defying 
all, walks up to the little monastery of S. Francesco at the 
very top of the hill, one may rest almost undisturbed, with 
Florence in the valley below, and gardens and vineyards un- 
dulating beneath, and a monk or two ascending or descend- 
ing the steps, and three or four picture-postcard hawkers 
gambling in a corner, and lizards on the wall. Here it is 
good to be in the late afternoon, when the light is mellow- 
ing ; and if you want tea there is a little loggia a few yards 
down this narrow steep path where it may be found; How 
many beautiful villas in which one could be happy sunning 
oneself among the lizards lie between this point and Flor- 
ence ! Who, sitting here, can fail to think that ? 

In walking to Fiesole one follows the high walls of the 
Villa Palmieri, which is now very private American prop- 
erty, but is famous for ever as the first refuge of Boc- 
caccio's seven young women and three young men when 
they fled from plague-stricken Florence in 1348 and told 
tales for ten halcyon days. It is now generally agreed 
that if Boccaccio had any particular house in his mind it 
was this. It used to be thought that the Villa Poggio 
Gherardo, Mrs. Ross's beautiful home on the way to 
Settignano, was the first refuge, and the Villa Palmieri 
the second, but the latest researches have it that the Pal- 
mieri was the first and the Podere della Fonte, or Villa di 
Boccaccio, as it is called, near Camerata, a little village 
below S. Domenico, the other. The Villa Palmieri has 
another and somewhat different historical association, for 




MONUMENT TO COUNT UGO 

BY M1XO DA F1ESOLE IN THE BADIA 



THE VILLA PALMIERI 165 

it was there that Queen Victoria resided for a while in 
1888. But the most interesting thing of all about it is 
the circumstance that it was the home of Matteo Palmieri, 
the poet, and Botticelli's friend and fellow-speculator on 
the riddle of life. Palmieri was the author of a remark- 
able poem called "La Citta della Vita" (The City of Life) 
which developed a scheme of theology that had many 
attractions to Botticelli's curious mind. The poem was 
banned by Rome, although not until after its author's 
death. Tn our National Gallery is a picture which used to 
be considered Botticelli's — No. 1126, "The Assumption 
of the Virgin" — especially as it is mentioned with some 
particularity by Vasari, together with the circumstance 
that the poet and painter devised it in collaboration, 
in which the poem is translated into pigment. As to the 
theology, I say nothing, nor as to its new ascription to 
Botticini ; but the picture has a greater interest for us in 
that it contains a view of Florence with its wall of towers 
around it in about 1475. The exact spot where the painter 
sat has been identified by Miss Stokes in "Six Months 
in the Apennines." On the left immediately below the 
painter's vantage-ground is the Mugnone, with a bridge 
over it. On the bank in front is the Villa Palmieri, and 
on the picture's extreme left is the Badia of Fiesole. 

On leaving S. Domenico, if still bent on walking, one 
should keep straight on and not follow the tram lines to 
the right. This is the old and terribly steep road which 
Lorenzo the Magnificent and his friends Politian and Pico 
della Mirandola had to travel whenever they visited the 
Medici villa, just under Fiesole, with its drive lined with 
cypresses. Here must have been great talk and much con- 
viviality. It is now called the Villa McCalmont. 

Once at Fiesole, by whatever means you reach it, do not 



166 "AERIAL FIESOLE" 

neglect to climb the monastery steps to the very top. It is 
a day of climbing, and a hundred or more steps either way 
mean nothing now. For here is a gentle little church 
with swift, silent monks in it, and a few flowers in bowls, 
and a religious picture by that strange Piero di Cosimo 
whose heart was with the gods in exile; and the view of 
Monte Ceceri, on the other side of Fiesole, seen through 
the cypresses here, which could not be better in disposition 
had Benozzo Gozzoli himself arranged them, is very strik- 
ing and memorable. 

Fiesole's darling son is Mino the sculptor — the "Raph- 
ael of the chisel" — whose radiant Madonnas and children 
and delicate tombs may be seen here and there all over 
Florence. The piazza is named after him ; he is celebrated 
on a marble slab outside the museum, where all the famous 
names of the vicinity may be read too ; and in the church 
is one of his most charming groups and finest heads. They 
are in a little chapel on the right of the choir. The head 
is that of Bishop Salutati, humorous, wise, and benign, and 
the group represents the adoration of a merry little Christ 
by a merry little S. John and others. As for the church 
itself, it is severe and cool, with such stone columns in it as 
must last for ever. 

But the main interest of Fiesole to most people is not 
the cypress-covered hill of S. Francesco; not the view 
from the summit; not the straw mementoes; not the 
Mino relief in the church; but the Roman arena. The 
excavators have made of this a very complete place. One 
can stand at the top of the steps and reconstruct it all — 
the audience, the performance, the performers. A very 
little time spent on building would be needed to restore the 
amphitheatre to its original form. Beyond it are baths, 
and in a hollow the remains of a temple with the altar 



TO SETTIGNANO 167 

where it ever was ; and then one walks a little farther and 
is on the ancient Etruscan wall, built when Fiesole was 
an Etruscan fortified hill city. So do the centuries fall 
away here ! But everywhere, among the ancient Roman 
stones so massive and exact, and the Etruscan stones, 
are the wild flowers which Luca Signorelli painted in 
that picture in the Uffizi which I love so much. 

After the amphitheatre one visits the Museum — with 
the same ticket — a little building filled with trophies of 
the spade. There is nothing very wonderful — nothing to 
compare with the treasures of the Archaeological Museum 
in Florence — but it is well worth a visit. 

On leaving the Museum on the last occasion that I was 
there — in April — I walked to Settignano. The road for 
a while is between houses, for Fiesole stretches a long way 
farther than one suspects, very high, looking over the 
valley of the Mugnone ; and then after a period between 
pine trees and grape-hyacinths one turns to the right and 
begins to descend. Until Poggio del Castello, a noble 
villa, on an isolated eminence, the fall is very gradual, with 
views of Florence round the shoulder of Monte Ceceri; 
but afterwards the road winds, to ease the fall, and the 
wayfarer turns off into the woods and tumbles down the hill 
by a dry water-course, amid crags and stones, to the be- 
ginnings of civilization again, at the Via di Desiderio da 
Settignano, a sculptor who stands to his native town in 
precisely the same relation as Mino to his. 

Settignano is a mere village, with villas all about it, and 
the thing to remember there is not only that Desiderio 
was born there but that Michelangelo's foster-mother 
was the wife of a local stone-cutter — stone-cutting at that 
time being the staple industry. On the way back to Flor- 
ence in the tram, one passes on the right a gateway sur- 



168 "AERIAL FIESOLE" 

mounted by statues of the poets, the Villa Poggio Gher- 
ardo, of which I have spoken earlier in the chapter. There 
is no villa with a nobler mien than this. 

That is one walk from Fiesole. Another is even more 
a sculptor's way : for it would include Maiano too, where 
Benedetto was born. The road is by way of the tram lines 
to that acute angle just below Fiesole when they turn back 
to S. Domenico, and so straight on down the hill. 

But if one is returning to Florence direct after leaving 
Fiesole it is well to walk down the precipitous paths to S. 
Domenico, and before again taking the tram visit the 
Badia overlooking the valley of the Mugnone. This is 
done by turning to the right just opposite the church of 
S. Domenico, which has little interest structurally but 
is famous as being the chapel of the monastery where Fra 
Angelico was once a monk. The Badia (abbey) di Fiesole, 
as it now is, was built on the site of an older monastery, by 
Cosimo Pater. Here Marsilio Ficino's Platonic Academy 
used to meet, in the loggia and in the little temple which 
one gains from the cloisters, and here Pico della Mirandola 
composed his curious gloss on Genesis. 

The dilapidated marble fagade of the church and its 
rugged stone- work are exceedingly ancient — dating in 
fact from the eleventh century; the new building is by 
Brunelleschi and to my mind is one of his most beautiful 
works, its lovely proportions and cool, unfretted white 
spaces communicating even more pleasure than the Pazzi 
chapel itself. The decoration has been kept simple and 
severe, and the colour is just the grey pietra serena of 
Fiesole, of which the lovely arches are made, all most ex- 
quisitely chiselled, and the pure white of the walls and 
ceilings. This church was a favourite with the Medici, 
and the youthful Giovanni, the son of Lorenzo the Mag- 



A HAPPY FRESCO 169 

nificent, received his cardinal's hat here in 1492, at the 
age of sixteen. He afterwards became Pope Leo X. How 
many of the boys, now in the school — for the monastery 
has become a Jesuit school — will, one wonders, rise to 
similar eminence. 

In the beautiful cloisters we have the same colour 
scheme as in the church, and here again Brunelleschi's 
miraculous genius for proportion is to be found. Here 
and there are foliations and other exquisite tracery by 
pupils of Desiderio da Settignano. The refectory has a 
high-spirited fresco by that artist whose room in the 
Uffizi is so carefully avoided by discreet chaperons — Gio- 
vanni di San Giovanni — representing Christ eating at a 
table, his ministrants being a crowd of little roguish 
angels and cherubim, one of whom (on the right) is in de- 
spair at having broken a plate. In the entrance lobby 
is a lavabo by Mino da Fiesole, with two little boys of 
the whitest and softest marble on it, which is worth study. 

And now we will return to the heart of Florence once 
more. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE BADIA AND DANTE 

Filippino Lippi — Buffalmacco — Mino da Fiesole — The Dante quarter 
— Dante and Beatrice — Monna Tessa — Gemma Donati — Dante in 
exile — Dante memorials in Florence — The Torre della Castagna — The 
Borgo degli Albizzi and the old palaces — S. Ambrogio — Mino's taber- 
nacle — Wayside masterpieces — S. Egidio. 

OPPOSITE the Bargello is a church with a very beau- 
tiful doorway designed by Benedetto da Rovezzano. 
This church is known as the Badia, and its delicate spire is 
a joy in the landscape from every point of vantage. The 
Badia is very ancient, but the restorers have been busy 
and little of Arnolfo's thirteenth-century work is left. It 
is chiefly famous now for its Filippino Lippi and two tombs 
by Mino da Fiesole, but historically it is interesting as 
being the burial-place of the chief Florentine families in 
the Middle Ages and as being the scene of Boccaccio's 
lectures on Dante in 1373. The Filippino altar-piece, 
which represents S. Bernard's Vision of the Virgin (a sub- 
ject we shall see treated very beautifully by Fra Barto- 
lommeo at the Accademia) is one of the most perfect and 
charming pictures by this artist : very grave and real and 
sweet, and the saint's hands exquisitely painted. The 
figure praying in the right-hand corner is the patron, 
Piero di Francesco del Pugliese, who commissioned this 
picture for the church of La Campora, outside the Porta 

170 



BUFFALMACCO'S JOKE 171 

Romana, where it was honoured until 1529, when Clement 
VII's troops advancing, it was brought here for safety and 
has here remained. 

Close by — in the same chapel — is a little door which 
the sacristan will open, disclosing a portion of Arnolfo's 
building with perishing frescoes which are attributed to 
Buffalmacco, an artist as to whose reality much scepticism 
prevails. They are not in themselves of much interest, 
although the sacristan's eagerness should not be dis- 
couraged ; but Buffalmacco being Boccaccio's, Sacchetti's, 
Vasari's (and, later, Anatole France's) amusing hero, it is 
pleasant to look at his work and think of his freakishness. 
Buffalmacco, if he ever existed, was one of the earlier 
painters, flourishing between 1311 and 1350, and was a pupil 
of Andrea Tafi. This simple man he plagued very diver t- 
ingly, once frightening him clean out of his house by fixing 
little lighted candles to the backs of beetles and steering 
them into Tafi's bedroom at night. Tafi was terrified, but 
on being told by Buffalmacco (who was a lazy rascal) that 
these devils were merely showing their objection to early 
rising, he became calm again, and agreed to lie in bed to a 
reasonable hour. Cupidity, however, conquering, he again 
ordered his pupil to be up betimes, when the beetles re-ap- 
peared and continued to do so until the order was revoked. 

The sculptor Mino da Fiesole, whom we shall shortly 
see again, at the Bargello, in portrait busts and Madonna 
reliefs, is at his best here, in the superb monument to 
Count Ugo, who founded, with his mother, the Benedictine 
Abbey of which the Badia is the relic. Here all Mino's 
sweet thoughts, gaiety, and charm are apparent, together 
with the perfection of radiant workmanship. The quiet 
dignity of the recumbent figure is no less masterly than the 
group above it. Note the impulsive urgency of the splen- 



172 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

did Charity, with her two babies, and the quiet beauty of 
the Madonna and Child above all, while the proportions 
and delicate patterns of the tomb as a whole still remain to 
excite one's pleasure and admiration. We shall see many 
tombs in Florence — few not beautiful — but none more 
joyously accomplished than this. The tomb of Carlo Mar- 
suppini in S. Croce by Desiderio da Settignano, which 
awaits us, was undoubtedly the parent of the Ugo, Mino 
following his master very closely; but his charm was his 
own. According to Vasari, the Ugo tomb was considered 
to be Mino's finest achievement, and he deliberately made 
the Madonna and Child as like the types of his beloved 
Desiderio as he could. It was finished in 1481, and Mino 
died in 1484, from a chill following over-exertion in mov- 
ing heavy stones. Mino also has here a monument to 
Bernardo Giugni, a famous gonfalonier in the time of 
Cosimo de' Medici, marked by the same distinction, but 
not quite so memorable. The Ugo is his masterpiece. 

The carved wooden ceiling, which is a very wonderful 
piece of work and of the deepest and most glorious hue, 
should not be forgotten ; but nothing is easier than to 
overlook ceilings. 

The cloisters are small, but they atone for that — if it is 
a fault — by having a loggia. From the loggia the top of 
the noble tower of the Palazzo Vecchio is seen to perfec- 
tion. Upon the upper walls is a series of frescoes illustrat- 
ing the life of S. Benedict which must have been very gay 
and spirited once but are now faded. 

The Badia may be said to be the heart of the Dante 
quarter. Dante must often have been in the church before 
it was restored as we now see it, and a quotation from the 
"Divine Comedy" is on its facade. The Via Dante and 
the Piazza Donati are close by, and in the Via Dante are 



BEATRICE 173 

many reminders of the poet besides his alleged birthplace. 
Elsewhere in the city we find incised quotations from his 
poem ; but the Baptistery — his "beautiful San Giovanni " 
— is the only building in the city proper now remaining 
which Dante would feel at home in could he return to it, 
and where we can feel assured of sharing his presence. 
The same pavement is there on which his feet once stood, 
and on the same mosaic of Christ above the altar would his 
eyes have fallen. When Dante was exiled in 1302 the 
cathedral had been in progress only for six or eight years ; 
but it is known that he took the deepest interest in its 
construction, and we have seen the stone marking the place 
where he sat, watching the builders. The fagade of the 
Badia of Fiesole and the church of S. Miniato can also 
remember Dante ; no others. 

Here, however, we are on that ground which is richest 
in personal associations with him and his, for in spite of re- 
building and certain modern changes the air is heavy with 
antiquity in these narrow streets and passages where the 
poet had his childhood and youth. The son of a lawyer 
named Alighieri, Dante was born in 1265, but whether or 
not in this Casa Dante is an open question, and it was in 
the Baptistery that he received the name of Durante, after- 
wards abbreviated to Dante — Durante meaning enduring, 
and Dante giving. Those who have read the " Vita Nuova," 
either in the original or in Rossetti's translation, may be 
surprised to learn that the boy was only nine when he first 
met his Beatrice, who was seven, and for ever passed into 
bondage to her. Who Beatrice was is again a mystery, 
but it has been agreed to consider her in real life a daughter 
of Folco Portinari, a wealthy Florentine and the founder 
of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, one of whose descend- 
ants commissioned Hugo van der Goes to paint the great 



174 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

triptych in the Uffizi. Folco's tomb is in S. Egidio, the 
hospital church, while in the passage to the cloisters is 
a stone figure of Monna Tessa (of whom we are about to see 
a coloured bust in the Bargello), who was not only Bea- 
trice's nurse (if Beatrice were truly of the Portinari) but 
the instigator, it is said, of Folco's deed of charity. 

Of Dante's rapt adoration of his lady, the " Vita Nuova" 
tells. According to that strangest monument of devotion 
it was not until another nine years had passed that he had 
speech of her; and then Beatrice, meeting him in the 
street, saluted him as she passed him with such ineffable 
courtesy and grace that he was lifted into a seventh heaven 
of devotion and set upon the writing of his book. The 
two seem to have had no closer intercourse : Beatrice shone 
distantly like a star and her lover worshipped her with in- 
creasing loyalty and fervour, overlaying the idea of her, as 
one might say, with gold and radiance, very much as we 
shall see Fra Angelico adding glory to the Madonna and 
Saints in his pictures, and with a similar intensity of ecstasy. 
Then one day Beatrice married, and not long afterwards, 
being always very fragile, she died, at the age of twenty- 
three. The fact that she was no longer on earth hardly 
affected her poet, whose worship of her had always so 
little of a physical character ; and she continued to domi- 
nate his thoughts. 

In 1293, however, Dante married one Gemma Donati, 
of the powerful Guelph family of that name, of which Corso 
Donati was the turbulent head ; and by her he had many 
children. For Gemma, however, he seems to have had no 
affection ; and when in 1301 he left Florence, never to re- 
turn, he left his wife for ever too. In 1289 Dante had 
been present at the battle of Campaldino, fighting with the 
Guelphs against the Ghibellines, and on settling down in 



DANTE EXILED . 175 

Florence and taking to politics it was as a Guelph, or 
rather as one of that branch of the Guelph party which 
had become White — the Bianchi — as opposed to the other 
party which was Black — the Neri. The feuds between these 
divisions took the place of those between the Guelphs and 
Ghibellines, since Florence was never happy without inter- 
nal strife, and it cannot have added to Dante's home com- 
fort that his wife was related to Corso Donati, who led the 
Neri and swaggered in his bullying way about the city with 
proprietary, intolerant airs that must have been infuriating 
to a man with Dante's stern sense of right and justice. It 
was Corso who brought about Dante's exile ; but he him- 
self survived only six years, and was then killed, by his own 
wish, on his way to execution, rather than be humiliated 
in the city in which he had swayed. Dante, whose genius 
devised a more lasting form of reprisal than any personal 
encounter could be, has depicted him in the "Purgatorio" 
as on the road to Hell. 

But this is going too fast. In 1300, when Dante was 
thirty-five, he was sufficiently important to be made one 
of the six priors of the city, and in that capacity was called 
upon to quell a Neri and Bianchi disturbance. It is char- 
acteristic of him that he was a party to the banishment 
of the leaders of both factions, among whom was his closest 
friend, Guido Cavalcanti the poet, who was one of the 
Bianchi. Whether it was because of Guido's illness in his 
exile, or from what motive, we shall not know; but the 
sentence was lightened in the case of this Bianco, a circum- 
stance which did not add to Dante's chances when the Neri, 
having plotted successfully with Charles of Valois, captured 
supreme power in Florence. This was in the year 1301, 
Dante being absent from that city on an embassy to Rome 
to obtain help for the Bianchi. He never came back ; for 



176 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

the Neri plans succeeded ; the Neri assumed control ; and 
in January, 1302, he was formally fined and banished. The 
nominal charge against him was of misappropriating funds 
while a prior; but that was merely a matter of form. 
His real offence was in being one of the Bianchi, an enemy 
of the Neri, and a man of parts. 

In the rest of Dante's life Florence had no part, except 
in his thoughts. How he viewed her the " Divine Comedy " 
tells us, and that he longed to return we also know. The 
chance was indeed once offered, but under the impossible 
condition that he should do public penance in the Bap- 
tistery for his offence. This he refused. He wandered 
here and there, and settled finally in Ravenna, where he died 
in 1321. The "Divine Comedy " anticipating printing by 
so many years — the invention did not reach Florence until 
1471 — Dante could not make much popular way as a poet 
before that time; but to his genius certain Florentines 
were earlier no strangers, not only by persuing MS. copies 
of his great work, which by its richness in Florentine allu- 
sions excited an interest apart altogether from that created 
by its beauty, but by public lectures on the poem, delivered 
in the churches by order of the Signoria. The first Dante 
professor to be appointed was Giovanni Boccaccio, the 
author of the "Decameron," who was born in 1313, eight 
years before Dante's death, and became an enthusiast upon 
the poet. The picture in the Duomo was placed there in 
1465. Then came printing to Florence and Dante passed 
quickly into his countrymen's thoughts and language. 

Michelangelo, who was born in time — 1475 — to enjoy in 
Lorenzo the Magnificent's house the new and precious ad- 
vantage of printed books, became as a boy a profound stu- 
dent of the poet, and when later an appeal was made from 
Florence to the Pope to sanction the removal of Dante's 




ST. GEORGE 

FROM THE MARBLE STATUE EY DOXATF.LLO IN THE BAEGELLO 

(A bronze replica is in the original niche with Donatello's 
original relief beneath it, in the vail of Or San Michele) 



DANTE RELICS 177 

bones to Florence, Michelangelo was among the signatories. 
But it was not done. His death-mask from Ravenna is in 
the Bargello : a few of his bones and their coffin are still 
in Ravenna, in the monastery of Classe, piously preserved 
in a room filled with Dante relics and literature; his 
tomb is elsewhere at Ravenna, a shrine visited by thou- 
sands every year. 

Ever since has Dante's fame been growing, so that only 
the Bible has led to more literature ; and to-day Florence 
is more proud of him than any of her sons, except perhaps 
Michelangelo. We have seen one or two reminders of him 
already; more are here where we stand. We have seen 
the picture in honour of him which the Republic set up in 
the cathedral; his head on a beautiful inlaid door in the 
Palazzo Vecchio, the building where his sentence of banish- 
ment was devised and carried, to be followed by death 
sentence thrice repeated (burning alive, to be exact) ; and 
we have seen the head-quarters of the Florentine Dante 
society in the guild house at Or San Michele. We have 
still to see his statue opposite S. Croce, another fresco head 
in S. Maria Novella, certain holograph relics at the library 
at S. Lorenzo and his head again by his friend Giotto, in the 
Bargello, where he would have been confined while waiting 
for death had he been captured. 

Dante's house has been rebuilt, very recently, and next 
it is a newer building still, with a long inscription in 
Italian upon it to the effect that the residence of Bella 
and Bellincione Alighieri stood hereabouts, and in that 
abode was Dante born. The Commune of Florence, it 
goes on to say, having secured possession of the site, 
built this edifice on the remains of the ancestral house as 
fresh evidence of the public veneration of the divine poet." 

N 



178 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

The Torre della Castagna, across the way, has an inscription 
in Italian, which may be translated thus : " This Tower, the 
so-called Tower of the Chestnut, is the solitary remnant of 
the head-quarters from which the Priors of the Arts gov- 
erned Florence, before the power and glory of the Floren- 
tine Commune procured the erection of the Palace of the 
Signoria." 

Few persons in the real city of Florence, it may be said 
confidently, live in a house built for them ; but hereabouts 
none at all. In fact, it is the exception anywhere near the 
centre of the city to live in a house built less than three 
centuries ago. Palaces abound, cut up into offices, flats, 
rooms, and even cinema theatres. The telegraph office in 
the Via del Proconsolo is a palace commissioned by the 
Strozzi but never completed : hence its name, Nonfinito ; 
next it is the superb Palazzo Quaratesi, which Brunelleschi 
designed, now the head-quarters of a score of firms and an 
Ecclesiastical School whence sounds of sacred song continu- 
ally emerge. 

Since we have Mino da Fiesole in our minds and are on 
the subject of old palaces let us walk from the Dante quarter 
in a straight line from the Corso, that very busy street of 
small shops* across the Via del Proconsolo and down the 
Borgo degli Albizzi to S. Ambrogio, where Mino was buried. 
This Borgo is a street of palaces and an excellent one in 
which to reflect upon the strange habit which wealthy 
Florentines then indulged of setting their mansions within 
a few feet of those opposite. Houses — or rather fortresses 
— that must have cost fortunes and have been occupied by 
families of wealth and splendour were erected so close to 
their vis-a-vis that two carts could not pass abreast between 
them. Side by side contiguity one can understand, but 
not this other adjacence. Every ground floor window is 
barred like a gaol. Those bars tell us something of the 



THE ANCIENT PALACES 179 

perils of life in Florence in the great days of faction am- 
bition; while the thickness of the walls and solidity of 
construction tell us something too of the integrity of the 
Florentine builders. These ancient palaces, one feels, 
whatever may happen to them, can never fall to ruin. 
Such stones as are placed one upon the other in the Pitti 
and the Strozzi and the Riccardi nothing can displace. It 
is an odd thought that several Florentine palaces and villas 
built before Columbus sailed for America are now occupied 
by rich Americans, some of them draw possibly much 
of their income from the manufacture of steel girders for 
sky scrapers. These ancient streets with their stern and 
sombre palaces specially touched the imagination of Dickens 
when he was in Florence in 1844, but in his "Pictures 
from Italy" he gave the city only fugitive mention. The 
old prison, which then adjoined the Palazzo Vecchio, 
and in which the prisoners could be seen, also moved him. 

The Borgo degli Albizzi, as I have said, is crowded with 
Palazzi. No. 24 — and there is something very incongruous 
in palaces having numbers at all — is memorable in history 
as being one of the homes of the Pazzi family who organ- 
ized the conspiracy against the Medici in 1478, as I have 
related in the second chapter, and failed so completely. 
Donatello designed the coat of arms here. The palace 
at No. 18 belonged to the Altoviti. No. 12 is the Palazzo 
Albizzi, the residence of one of the most powerful of the 
Florentine families, whose allies were all about them in 
this quarter, as it was wise to be. 

As a change from picture galleries, I can think of nothing 
more delightful than to wander about these ancient streets, 
and, wherever a courtyard or garden shines, penetrate to 
it; stopping now and again to enjoy the vista, the red 
Duomo, or Giotto's tower, so often mounting into the sky 



180 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

at one end, or an indigo Apennine at the other. Standing 
in the middle of the Via Ricasoli, for example, one has 
sight of both. 

At the Piazza S. Pietro we see one of the old towers of 
Florence, of which there were once so many, into which the 
women and children might retreat in times of great danger, 
and here too is a series of arches which fruit and vegetable 
shops make gay. 

The next Piazza is that of S. Ambrogio. This church 
is interesting not only for doing its work in a poor quarter 
— one has the feeling at once that it is a right church 
in the right place — but as containing, as I have said, the 
grave of Mino da Fiesole : Mino de' Poppi detto da Fiesole, 
as the floor tablet has it. Over the altar of Mino's little 
chapel is a large tabernacle from his hand, in which the 
gayest little Boy gives the benediction, own brother to that 
one by Desiderio at S. Lorenzo. The tabernacle must be 
one of the master's finest works, and beneath it is a relief in 
which a priest pours something — perhaps the very blood 
of Christ which is kept here — from one chalice to another 
held by a kneeling woman, surrounded by other kneeling 
women, which is a marvel of flowing beauty and life. The 
lines of it are peculiarly lovely. 

On the wall of the same little chapel is a fresco by 
Cosimo Rosselli which must once have been a delight, rep- 
resenting a procession of Corpus Christi — this chapel being 
dedicated to the miracle of the Sacrament — and it contains, 
according to Vasari, a speaking likeness of Pico della 
Mirandola. Other graves in the church are those of 
Cronaca, the architect of the Palazzo Vecchio's great 
Council Room, a friend of Savonarola and Rosselli's nephew 
by marriage ; and Verrocchio, the sculptor, whose beauti- 
ful work we are now to see in the Bargello. It is said that 




THE BADIA AND THE BARGELLO FROM THE PIAZZA S. FIRENZE 



WAYSIDE MASTERPIECES 181 

Lorenzo di Credi also lies here, and Albertinelli, who gave 
up the brush for innkeeping. 

Opposite the church, on a house at the corner of the 
Borgo S. Croce and the Via de' Macci, is a della Robbia 
saint — one of many such mural works of art in Florence. 
Thus, at the corner of the Via Cavour and the Via de' 
Pucci, opposite the Riccardi palace, is a beautiful Madonna 
and Child by Donatello. In the Via Zannetti, which leads 
out of the Via Cerretani, is a very pretty example by Mino, 
a few houses on the right. These are sculpture. And 
everywhere in the older streets you may see shrines built 
into the wall : there is even one in the prison, in the Via 
deir Agnolo, once the convent of the Murate, where Cath- 
erine de' Medici was imprisoned as a girl; but many of 
them are covered with glass which has been allowed to 
become black. 

A word or two on S. Egidio, the church of the great 
hospital of S. Maria Nuova, might round off this chapter, 
since it was Folco Portinari, Beatrice's father, who founded 
it. The hospital stands in a rather forlorn square a few 
steps from the Duomo, down the Via dell' Orivolo and 
then the first to the left ; and it extends right through to 
the Via degli Alfani in cloisters and ramifications. The 
fagade is in a state of decay, old frescoes peeling off it, but 
one picture has been enclosed for protection — a gay and 
nice busy scene of the consecration of the church by Pope 
Martin V. Within, it is a church of the poor, notable for 
its general florid comfort (comparatively) and Folco's gothic 
tomb. In the chancel is a pretty little tabernacle by Mino, 
which used to have a bronze door by Ghiberti, but has it 
no longer, and a very fine della Robbia Madonna and 
Child, probably by Andrea. Behind a grille, upstairs, sit 
the hospital nurses. In the adjoining cloisters — one of the 



182 THE BADIA AND DANTE 

high roads to the hospital proper — is the ancient statue 
of old Monna Tessa, Beatrice's nurse, and, in a niche, 
a pretty symbolical painting of Charity by that curious 
painter Giovanni di San Giovanni. It was in the hospital 
that the famous Van der Goes triptych used to hang. 

A tablet on a house opposite S. Egidio, a little to the 
right, states that it was there that Ghiberti made the 
Baptistery gates which Michelangelo considered fit to be 
the portals of Paradise. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE BAHGELLO 

Plastic art — Blood-soaked stones — The faithful artists — Michel- 
angelo — * Italian custodians — The famous Davids — Michelangelo's 
tondo — Brutus — Benedetto da Rovezzano — Donatello's life-work — 
The S. George — Verrocchio — Ghiberti and Brunelleschi and the Baptis- 
tery doors — Benvenuto Cellini — John of Bologna — Antonio Pollaiuolo 
— Verrocchio again — Mino da Fiesole — The Florentine wealth of sculp- 
ture — Beautiful ladies — The della Robbias — South Kensington and 

the Louvre. 

BEFORE my last visit but one to Florence, plastic art 
was less attractive to me than pictorial art. But now 
I am not sure. At any rate when, here in England, I think 
of Florence, as so often I do, I find myself visiting in 
imagination the Bargello before the Uffizi. Pictures in 
any number can bewilder and dazzle as much as they de- 
light. The eye tires. And so, it is true, can a multiplic- 
ity of antique statuary such as one finds at the Vatican 
or at the Louvre; but a small collection of Renaissance 
work,- so soft and human, as at the Bargello, is not only 
joy-giving but refreshing too. The soft contours soothe 
as well as enrapture the eye : the tenderness of the 
Madonnas, the gentleness of the Florentine ladies and 
youths, as Verrocchio and Mino da Fiesole, Donatello, and 
Pollaiuolo, moulded them, calm one where the perfection 
of Phidias and Praxiteles excites. Hence the very special 
charm of the Bargello, whose plastic treasures are compar- 

183 



184 THE BARGELLO 

atively few and picked, as against the heaped profusion of 
paint in the Uffizi and the Pitti. It pairs off rather with 
the Accademia, and has this further point in common with 
that choicest of galleries, that Michelangelo's chisel is 
represented in both. 

The Bargello is at the corner of the Via Ghibellina in 
the narrow Via del Proconsolo — so narrow that if you take 
one step off the pavement a tram may easily sweep you 
into eternity ; so narrow also that the real dignity of the 
Bargello is never to be properly seen, and one thinks 
of it rather for its inner court and staircase and its strong 
tower than for its massive facades. Its history is soaked 
in blood. It was built in the middle of the thirteenth 
century as the residence of the chief magistrate of the city, 
the Capitano del popolo, or Podesta, first appointed soon 
after the return of the Guelphs in 1251, and it so remained, 
with such natural Florentine vicissitudes as destruction by 
mobs and fire, for four hundred years, when, in 1574, it 
was converted into a prison and place of execution and the 
head-quarters of the police, and changed its name from the 
Palazzo del Podesta to that by which it is now known, 
so called after the Bargello, or chief of the police. 

It is indeed fortunate that no rioters succeeded in ob- 
literating Giotto's fresco in the Bargello chapel, which he 
painted probably in 1300, when his friend Dante was a 
Prior of the city. Giotto introduced the protrait of Dante 
which has drawn so many people to this little room, to- 
gether with portraits of Corso Donati, and Brunetto 
Latini, Dante's tutor. Whitewash covered it for two 
centuries. Dante's head has been restored. 

It was in 1857 that the Bargello was again converted, 
this time to its present gracious office of preserving the 
very flower of Renaissance plastic art. 



THE COURTYARD 185 

Passing through the entrance hall, which has a remark- 
able collection of Medicean armour and weapons, and in 
which (I have read but not seen) is an oubliette under one 
of the great pillars, the famous court is gained and the fa- 
mous staircase. Of this court what can I say ? Its quality 
is not to be communicated in words ; and even the photo- 
graphs of it that are sold have to be made from pictures, 
which the assiduous Signor Giuliani, among others, is al- 
ways so faithfully painting, stone for stone. One forgets 
all the horrors that once were enacted here — the execution 
of honourable Florentine patriots whose only offence was 
that in their service of this proud and beautiful city they 
differed from those in power; one thinks only of the soft 
light on the immemorial walls, the sturdy graceful columns, 
the carved escutcheons, the resolute steps, the spaciousness 
and stern calm of it all. 

In the colonnade are a number of statues, the most famous 
of which is perhaps the "Dying Adonis" which Baedeker 
gives to Michelangelo but the curator to Vincenzo di Rossi ; 
an ascription that would annoy Michelangelo exceedingly, 
if it were a mistake, since Rossi was a pupil of his enemy, 
the absurd Bandinelli. Mr. W. G. Waters, in his 
"Italian Sculptors," considers not only that Michelangelo 
was the sculptor, but that the work was intended to form 
part of the tomb of Pope Julius. In the second room 
opposite the main entrance across the courtyard, we come 
however to Michelangelo authentic and supreme, for here 
are his small David, his Brutus, his Bacchus, and a tondo 
of the Madonna and Child. 

According to Baedeker the Bacchus and the David 
revolve. Certainly they are on revolving stands, but to say 
that they revolve is to disregard utterly the character of 
the Italian official. A catch holds each in its place, and 



186 THE BAEGELLO 

any effort to release this or to induce the custodian to release 
it is equal y futile " Chiuso" (closed), he replies, and that 
is final. Useless to explain that the backs of statues can 
be beautiful as the front; that one of the triumphs of 
great statuary is its equa perfection from every point; 
that the revolving stand was not made for a joke but for 
a serious purpose. "Chiuso," he replies. The museum 
custodians of Italy are either like this — jaded figures of 
apathy — or they are enthusiasts. To each enthusiast 
there are ninety-nine of the other, who either sit in a kind 
of stupor and watch you with sullen suspicion or clear their 
throats as no gentleman should. The result is that when 
one meets the enthusiasts one remembers them. There is 
a little dark fellow in the Brera at Milan whose zeal in dis- 
playing the merits of Mantegna's foreshortened Christ is 
as unforgettable as a striking piece of character-acting in a 
theatre. There is a more reserved but hardly less appre- 
ciative official in the Accademia at Bologna with a genuine 
if incommunicable passion for Guido Reni. And, lastly, 
there is Alfred Branconi, at S. Croce, with his continual 
and rapturous "It is f aine ! It is faine!" but he is a 
private guide. The Bargello custodians belong to the other 
camp. 

The fondness of sculptors for David as a subject is due 
to the fact that the Florentines, who had spent so much of 
their time under tyrants and so much of their blood in re- 
sisting them, were captivated by the idea of this stripling 
freeing his compatriots from Goliath and the Philistines. 
David, as I have said in my remarks on the Piazza della 
Signoria, stood to them, with Judith, as a champion of 
liberty. He was alluring also on account of his youth, so 
attractive to Renaissance sculptors and poets, and the 
Florentines' admiration was not diminished by the circum- 




MADONNA AND CHILD 

FROM THE RELIEF BY VERROCCHIO IN THE BARGEIXO 



THE DAVIDS 187 

stance that his task was a singularly light one, since he 
never came to close quarters with his antagonist at all and 
had the Lord of Hosts on his side. A David of mythol- 
ogy, Perseus, another Florentine hero, a stripling with 
what looked like a formidable enemy, also enjoyed 
supernatural assistance. 

David appealed to the greatest sculptors of all — to Mi- 
chelangelo, to Donatello, and to Verrocchio ; and Michelan- 
gelo made two figures, one of which is here and the other at 
the Accademia, and Donatello two figures, both of which are 
here, so that, Verrocchio's example being also here, very 
interesting comparisons are possible. 

Personally I put Michelangelo's small David first ; it is 
the one in which, apart from its beauty, you can best be- 
lieve. His colossal David seems to me one of the most 
glorious things n the world ; but it is not David ; not the 
simple, ruddy shepherd lad of the Bible. This David could 
obviously defeat anybody. Donatello's more famous 
David, in the hat, upstairs, is the most charming creature 
you ever saw, but it had been far better to call him some- 
thing else. Both he and Verrocchio's David, also up- 
stairs, are young tournament nobles rather than shepherd 
lads who have slung a stone at a Philistine bully. I see 
them both — but particularly perhaps Verrocchio's — in the 
intervals of strife most acceptably holding up a lady's train, 
or lying at her feet reading one of Boccaccio's stories ; 
neither could ever have watched a flock . Donatello's second 
David, behind the more famous one, has more reality; 
but I would put Michelangelo's smaller one first. And 
what beautiful marble it is — so rich and warm ! 

One point which both Donatello's and Verrocchio's 
David emphasizes is the gulf that was fixed between the 
Biblical and religious conception of the youthful psalmist 



188 THE BARGELLO 

and that of these sculptors of the Renaissance. One can, 
indeed, never think of Donatello as a religious artist. 
Serious, yes ; but not religious, or at any rate not religious 
in the too common sense of the word, in the sense of ap- 
pertaining to a special reverential mood distinguished from 
ordinary moods of dailiness. His David, as I have said, is 
a comely, cultured boy, who belongs to the very flower of 
chivalry and romance. Verrocchio's is akin to him, but he 
has less radiant mastery. Donatello's David might be the 
young lord ; Verrocchio's, his page. Here we see the new 
spirit, the Renaissance, at work, for though religion called 
it into being and the Church continued to be its patron, it 
rapidly divided into two halves, and while the painters 
were bringing all their genius to glorify sacred history, the 
scholars were endeavouring to humanize it. In this task 
they had no such allies as the sculptors, and particularly 
Donatello, who, always thinking independently and vigor- 
ously, was their best friend. Donatello's David fought 
also more powerfully for the modern spirit (had he known 
it) than ever he could have done in real life with such a 
large sword in such delicate hands ; for by being the first 
nude statue of a Biblical character, he made simpler the way 
to all humanists in whatever medium they worked. 

Michelangelo was not often tender. Profoundly sad he 
could be : indeed his own head, in bronze, at the Acca- 
demia, might stand for melancholy and bitter world- 
knowledge; but seldom tender; yet the Madonna and 
Child in the circular bas-relief in this ground-floor room 
have something very nigh tenderness, and a greatness that 
none of the other Italian sculptors, however often they 
attempted this subject, ever reached. The head of Mary 
in this relief is, I think, one of the most beautiful things 
in Florence, none the less so for the charming head-dress 



MICHELANGELO 189 

which the great austere artist has given her. The Child is 
older than is usual in such groups, and differs in another 
way, for, tiring of a reading lesson, He has laid His arm 
upon the book : a pretty touch. 

Michelangelo's Bacchus, an early work, is opposite. 
It is a remarkable proof of his extraordinary range that 
the same little room should contain the David, the 
Madonna, the Brutus, and the Bacchus. In David one 
can believe, as I have said, as the young serious stalwart 
of the Book of Kings. The Madonna, although perhaps 
a shade too intellectual — or at any rate more intellectual 
and commanding than the other great artists have ac- 
customed us to think of her — has a sweet gravity and 
power and almost domestic tenderness. The Brutus is 
powerful and modern and realistic ; while Bacchus is steeped 
in the Greek spirit, and the little faun hiding behind him 
is the very essence of mischief. Add to these the fluid 
vigour of the unfinished relief of the Martyrdom of S. 
Andrew, No. 126, and you have five examples of human 
accomplishment that would be enough without the other 
Florentine evidences at all — the Medici chapel tombs and 
the Duomo Pieta. 

The inscription under the Brutus says: "While the 
sculptor was carving the statue of Brutus in marble, he 
thought of the crime and held his hand" ; and the theory 
is that Michelangelo was at work upon this head at Rome 
when, in 1537, Lorenzino de' Medici, who claimed to be a 
modern Brutus, murdered Alessandro de' Medici. But it 
might easily have been that the sculptor was concerned 
only with Brutus the friend of Caesar and revolted at his 
crime. The circumstance that the head is unfinished 
matters nothing. Once seen it can never be forgotten. 

Although Michelangelo is, as always, the dominator, 



190 THE BARGELLO 

this room has other possessions to make it a resort of 
visitors. At the end is a fireplace from the Casa Borg- 
herini, by Benedetto da Rovezzano, which probably has not 
an equal, although the pietra serena of which it is made is 
a horrid hue ; and on the walls are fragments of the tomb 
of S. Giovanni Gualberto at Vallombrosa, designed by 
the same artist but never finished. Benedetto (1474- 
1556) has a peculiar interest to the English in having 
come to England in 1524 at the bidding of Cardinal 
Wolsey to design a tomb for that proud prelate. On 
Wolsey's disgrace, Henry VIII decided that the tomb 
should be continued for his own bones ; but the sculptor 
died first and it was unfinished. Later Charles I cast 
envious eyes upon it and wished to lie within it ; but cir- 
cumstances deprived him too of the honour. Finally, 
after having been despoiled of certain bronze additions, 
the sarcophagus was used for the remains of Nelson, which 
it now holds, in St. Paul's crypt. The Borgherini fireplace 
is a miracle of exquisite work, everything having received 
thought, the delicate traceries on the pillars not less than 
the frieze. The fireplace is in perfect condition, not one 
head having been knocked off, but the Gualberto reliefs 
are badly damaged, yet full of life. The angel under the 
saint's bier in No. 104 almost moves. 

In this room look also at the beautiful blades of barley 
on the pillars in the corner close to Brutus, and the lovely 
frieze by an unknown hand above Michelangelo's Martyr- 
dom of S. Andrew, and the carving upon the two niches 
for statues on either side of the door. 

The little room through which one passes to the Michel- 
angelos may well be lingered in. There is a gravely fine 
floor- tomb of a nun to the left of the door — No. 20 — ■ 
which one would like to see in its proper position instead 



DONATELLO 191 

of upright against the wall ; and a stone font in the middle 
which is very fine. There is also a beautiful tomb by 
Giusti da Settignano, and the iron gates are worth atten- 
tion. 

From Michelangelo let us ascend the stairs, past the 
splendid gates, to Donatello ; and here a word about that 
sculptor, for though we meet him again and again in Flor- 
ence (yet never often enough) it is in the upper room in 
the Bargello that he is enthroned. Of Donatello there is 
nothing known but good, and good of the most captivating 
variety. Not only was he a great creative genius, equally 
the first modern sculptor and the sanest, but he was him- 
self tall and comely, open-handed, a warm friend, humorous, 
and of vigorous intellect. A hint of the affection in which 
he was held is obtained from his name Donatello, which is 
a pet diminutive of Donato — his full style being Donato di 
Niccolo di Betto Bardi. Born in 1386, four years before 
Fra Angelico and nearly a century after Giotto, he was the 
son of a well-to-do wool-comber who was no stranger to the 
perils of political energy in these times. Of Donatello's 
youth little is known, but it is almost certain that he helped 
Ghiberti with his first Baptistery doors, being thirteen 
when that sculptor began upon them. At sixteen he was 
himself enrolled as a sculptor. It was soon after this that, 
as I have said in the first chapter, he accompanied his friend 
Brunelleschi, who was thirteen years his senior, to Rome ; 
and returning alone he began work in Florence in earnest, 
both for the cathedral and campanile and for Or San 
Michele. In 1425 he took into partnership Michelozzo, 
and became, with him, a protege of Cosimo de' Medici, 
with whom both continued on friendly terms for the rest 
of their fives. In 1433 he was in Rome again, probably 
not sorry to be there since Cosimo had been banished and 



192 THE BARGELLO 

had taken Michelozzo with him. On the triumphant re- 
turn of Cosimo in 1434 Donatello's most prosperous period 
began ; for he was intimate with the most powerful man 
in Florence, was honoured by him, and was himself at the 
useful age of forty-four. 

Of Donatello as an innovator I have said something 
above, in considering the Florentine Davids, but he was 
also the inventor of that low relief in which his school worked, 
called rilievo stiacciato, of which there are some excellent 
examples at South Kensington In Ghiberti's high relief, 
breaking out often into completely detached figures, he 
was also a master, as we shall see at S. Lorenzo. But his 
greatest claim to distinction is his psychological insight 
allied to perfect mastery of form His statues were not 
only the first really great statues since the Greeks, but are 
still (always leaving Michelangelo on one side as abnormal) 
the greatest modern examples judged upon a realistic basis. 
Here in the Bargello, in originals and in casts, he may be 
adequately appreciated ; but to Padua his admirers must 
certainly go, for the bronze equestrian statue of Gatta- 
melata is there. Donatello was painted by his friend 
Masaccio at the Carmine, but the fresco has perished. He 
is to be seen in the Uffizi portico, although that is probably 
a fancy representation ; and again on a tablet in the wall 
opposite the apse of the Duomo. The only contemporary 
portrait (and this is very doubtful), is in a picture in the 
Louvre given to Uccello — a serious, thoughtful, bearded 
face with steady, observant eyes : one of five heads, the others 
being Giotto, Manetti, Brunelleschi, and Uccello himself. 

Donatello, who never married, but lived for much of his 
life with his mother and sister, died at a great age, cared 
for both by Cosimo de* Medici and his son and successor 
Piero. He was buried with Cosimo in S. Lorenzo. Vasari 




MADONNA AND CHILD 

PROM THE RELIEF BY LUCA DELLA ROBBIA IN T THE BARGELLO 



S. GEORGE 193 

tells us that he was free, affectionate, and courteous, but of 
a high spirit and capable of sudden anger, as when he de- 
stroyed with a blow a head he had made for a mean patron 
who objected to its very reasonable price. "He thought," 
says Vasari, " nothing of money, keeping it in a basket 
suspended from the ceiling, so that all his workmen and 
friends took what they wanted without saying anything.*' 
He was as careless of dress as great artists have ever been, 
and of a handsome robe which Cosimo gave him he com- 
plained that it spoiled his work. When he was dying his 
relations affected great concern in the hope of inheriting 
a farm at Prato, but he told them that he had left it to 
the peasant who had always toiled there, and he would not 
alter his will. 

The Donatello collection in the Bargello has been made 
representative by the addition of casts. The originals 
number ten : there is also a cast of the equestrian statue 
of Gattemalata at Padua, which is, I suppose, next to Ver- 
rocchio's Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice, the finest eques- 
trian statue that exists ; heads from various collections, 
including M. Dreyfus' in Paris, although Dr. Bode now 
gives that charming example to Donatello's pupil Desiderio ; 
and various other masterpieces elsewhere. But it is the 
originals that chiefly interest us, and first of these in bronze 
is the David, of which I have already spoken, and first 
of these in marble the S. George. This George is just 
such a resolute, clean, warlike idealist as one dreams him. 
He would kill a dragon, it is true ; but he would eat and 
sleep after it and tell the story modestly and not without 
humour By a happy chance the marble upon which 
Donatello worked had light veins running through it just 
where the head is, with the result that the face seems to 
possess a radiance of its own. This statue was made for 



194 THE BARGELLO 

Or San Michele, where it used to stand until 1891, when the 
present bronze replica that takes its place was made. The 
spirited marble frieze underneath it at Or San Michele is the 
original and has been there for centuries. It was this S. 
George whom Ruskin took as the head and inspiration of 
his Saint George's Guild. 

The David is interesting not only in itself but as being 
the first isolated statue of modern times. It was made for 
Cosimo de' Medici, to stand in the courtyard of the Medici 
palace (now the Riccardi), and until that time, since an- 
tiquity, no one had made a statue to stand on a pedestal 
and be observable from all points. Hitherto modern sculp- 
tors had either made reliefs or statues for niches. It was 
also the first nude statue of modern times ; and once again 
one has the satisfaction of recognizing that the first was 
the best. At any rate, no later sculptor has made anything 
more charming than this figure, or more masterly within 
its limits. 

After the S. George and the bronze David, the two 
most memorable things are the adorable bronze Amorino 
in its quaint little trousers — or perhaps not Amorino at 
all, since it is trampling on a snake, which such little 
sprites did not do — and the coloured terra-cotta bust called 
Niccolo da Uzzano, so like life as to be after a while dis- 
concerting. The sensitiveness of the mouth can never have 
been excelled. The other originals include the gaunt John 
the Baptist with its curious little moustache, so far re- 
moved from the Amorino and so admirable a proof of 
the sculptor's vigilant thoughtfulness in all he did ; the re- 
lief of the infant John, one of the most animated of the 
heads (the Baptist at all periods of his life being a favourite 
with this sculptor) ; three bronze heads, of which those of 
the Young Gentleman and the Roman Emperor remain 



VERROCCHIO 195 

most clearly in my mind. But the authorship of the Roman 
Emperor is very doubtful. And lastly the glorious Mar- 
zocco — the lion from the front of the Palazzo Vecchio, firmly 
holding the Florentine escutcheon against the world. 
Florence has other Donatellos — the Judith in the Loggia 
de' Lanzi, the figures on Giotto's campanile, the Annun- 
ciation in S. Croce, and above all the cantoria in the 
Museum of the Cathedral ; but this room holds most of his 
strong sweet genius. Here (for there are seldom more than 
two or three persons in it) you can be on terms with him. 

After the Donatellos we should see the other Renaissance 
sculpture. But first the Carrand collection of ivories, 
pictures, jewels, carvings, vestments, plaquettes, and ob- 
jets d'art, bequeathed to Florence in 1888. Everything 
here is good and worth examination. Among the out- 
standing things is a plaquette, No. 393, a Satyr and a 
Bacchante, attributed to Donatello, under the title "Alle- 
gory of Spring," which is the work of a master and a very riot 
of mythological imagery. The neighbouring plaquettes, 
many of them of the school of Donatello, are all beautiful. 

We now find the sixth salon, to see Verrocchio's David, 
of which I have already spoken. This wholly charming 
boy, a little nearer life perhaps than Donatello's, although 
not quite so radiantly distinguished, illustrates the associa- 
tion of Verrocchio and Leonardo as clearly as any of the 
paintings do; for the head is sheer Leonardo. At the 
Palazzo Vecchio we saw Verrocchio's boy with the dolphin 
— that happy bronze lyric — and outside Or San Michele 
his Christ and S. Thomas, in Donatello and Michelozzo's 
niche, with the flying cherubim beneath. But as with 
Donatello, so with Verrocchio, one must visit the Bargello 
to see him, in Florence, most intimately. For here are not 
only his David, which once known can never be forgotten 



196 THE BARGELLO 

and is as full of the Renaissance spirit as anything ever 
fashioned, whether in bronze, marble, or paint ; but — up- 
stairs — certain other wonderfully beautiful things to 
which we shall come, and, that being so, I would like 
here to say a little about their author. 

Verrocchio is a nickname, signifying the true eye. 
Andrea's real name was de' Cioni ; he is known to fame as 
Andrea of the true eye, and since he had acquired this 
style at a time when every eye was true enough, his must 
have been true indeed. It is probable that he was a pupil 
of Donatello, who in 1435, when Andrea was born, was forty- 
nine, and in time he was to become the master of Leonardo : 
thus are the great artists related. The history of Floren- 
tine art is practically the history of a family; one artist 
leads to the other — the genealogy of genius. The story 
goes that it was the excellence of the angel contributed by 
Leonardo to his master's picture of the Baptism of Christ 
(at the Accademia) which decided Verrocchio to paint no 
more, just as Ghiberti's superiority in the relief of Abraham 
and Isaac drove Brunelleschi from sculpture. If this be so, 
it accounts for the extraordinarily small number of pictures 
by him. Like many artists of his day Verrocchio was also a 
goldsmith, but he was versatile above most, even when 
versatility was a habit, and excelled also as a musician. 
Both Piero de' Medici and Lorenzo employed him to de- 
sign their tournament costumes ; and it was for Lorenzo 
that he made this charming David and the boy and the 
dolphin. His greatest work of all is the bronze equestrian 
statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni in Venice, the finest thing 
of its kind in the world, and so glorious and exciting indeed 
that every city should have a cast of it in a conspicuous 
position just for the good of the people. It was while at 
work upon this that Verrocchio died, at the age of fifty- 



THE RIVALS 197 

three. His body was brought from Venice by his pupil 
Lorenzo di Credi, who adored him, and was buried in S. 
Ambrogio in Florence. Lorenzo di Credi painted his por- 
trait, which is now in the Uffizi — a plump, undistinguished 
looking little man. 

In the David room are also the extremely interesting 
rival bronze reliefs of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, which 
were made by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi as trials of skill 
to see which would win the commission to design the new 
gates of the Baptistery, as I have told earlier in this 
book. Six competitors entered for the contest; but Ghi- 
berti's and Brunelleschi's efforts were alone considered 
seriously. A comparison of these two reliefs proves that 
Ghiberti, at any rate, had a finer sense of grouping. He 
filled the space at his disposal more easily and his hand 
was more fluent ; but there is a very engaging vivacity in 
the other work, the realistic details of which are so arrest- 
ing as to make one regret that Brunelleschi had for sculpture 
so little time. In S. Maria Novella is that crucifix in wood 
which he carved for his friend Donatello, but his only 
other sculptured work in Florence is the door of his beauti- 
ful Pazzi chapel in the cloisters of S. Croce. Of Ghiberti's 
Baptistery gates I have said more elsewhere. Enough here 
to add that the episode of Abraham and Isaac does not 
occur in them. 

This little room also has a Cassa Reliquiaria by Ghi- 
berti, below a fine relief by Bertoldo, Michelangelo's 
master in sculpture, representing a battle between the 
Romans and the Barbarians ; cases of exquisite bronzes ; the 
head, in bronze (No. 25) of an old placid, shrewd woman, 
executed from a death-mask, which the photographers call 
Contessina de' Bardi, wife of Cosimo de' Medici, by Dona- 
tello, but which cannot be so, since the sculptor died first ; 



198 THE BARGELLO 

heads of Apollo and two babies, over the Ghiberti and 
Brunelleschi competition reliefs ; a crucifixion by Bertoldo ; 
a row of babies representing the triumph of Bacchus; 
and below these a case of medals and plaquettes, every one 
a masterpiece. 

The next room, Sala VII, is apportioned chiefly between 
Cellini and Gian or Giovanni da Bologna, the two 
sculptors who dominate the Loggia de* Lanzi. Here we 
may see models for Cellini's Perseus in bronze and wax 
and also for the relief of the rescue of Andromeda, under 
the statue; his Cosimo I, with the wart (omitted by 
Bandinelli in the head downstairs, which pairs with 
Michelangelo's Brutus) ; and various smaller works. But 
personally I find that Cellini will not do in such near 
proximity to Donatello, Verrocchio, and their gentle fol- 
lowers. He was, of course, far later. He was not born 
(in 1500) until Donatello had been dead thirty-four years, 
Mino da Fiesole sixteen years, Desiderio da Settignano 
thirty-six years, and Verrocchio twelve years. He thus did 
not begin to work until the finer impulses of the Renais- 
sance were exhausted. Giovanni da Bologna, although 
he, it is true, was even later (1524-1608), I find more sym- 
pathetic ; while Landor boldly proclaimed him superior to 
Michelangelo. His "Mercury," in the middle of the room, 
which one sees counterfeited in all the statuary shops of 
Florence, is truly very nearly light as air. If ever bronze 
floated, this figure does. His cherubs and dolphins are 
very skilful and merry; his turkey and eagle and other 
animals indicate that he had humility. John of Bologna 
is best known at Florence by his Rape of the Sabines and 
Hercules and Nessus in the Loggia de' Lanzi; but the 
Boboli gardens have a fine group of Oceanus and river 
gods by him in the midst of a lake. Before leaving this 



THE "YOUNG WARRIOR" 199 

room look at the relief of Christ in glory (No. 35) to the left 
of the door, by Jacopo Sansovino, a rival of Michelangelo, 
which is most admirable, and at the case of bronze an- 
imals by Pietro Tacca, John of Bologna's pupil, who made 
the famous boar (a copy of an ancient marble) at the 
Mercato Nuovo and the reliefs for the pediment of the 
statue of Cosimo I (by his master) in the Piazza della 
Signoria. But I believe that the most beautiful thing in 
this room is the bronze figure for the tomb of Mariano 
Sozzino by Lorenzo di Pietro. 

Before we look at the della Robbias, which are in the 
two large rooms upstairs, let us finish with the marble and 
terra-cotta statuary in the two smaller rooms to the left as 
one passes through the first della Robbia room. In the 
first of them, corresponding to the room with Verrocchio's 
David downstairs, we find Verrocchio again, with a bust of 
Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici (whom Botticelli painted in 
the Uffizi holding a medal in his hand) and a most ex- 
quisite Madonna and Child in terra-cotta from S. Maria 
Nuova. (This is on a hinge, for better light, but the 
official skies will fall if you touch it.) Here also is the 
bust of a young warrior by Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), 
who was Verrocchio's closest rival and one of Ghiberti's 
assistants for the second Baptistery doors. His greatest 
work is at Rome, but this bust is indescribably charming, 
and the softness of the boy's contours is almost of life. 
It is sometimes called Giuliano de' Medici. Other beau- 
tiful objects in the room are the terra-cotta Madonna 
and Child by Andrea Sansovino (1460-1529), Pollaiuolo's 
pupil, which is as radiant although not so domestically 
lovely as Verrocchio's ; the bust by Benedetto da Maiano 
(1442-1497) of Pietro Mellini, that shrewd and wrinkled 
patron of the Church who presented to S. Croce the famous 



200 THE BARGELLO 

pulpit by this sculptor ; an ancient lady, by the door, in 
coloured terra-cotta, who is thought to represent Monna 
Tessa, the nurse of Dante's Beatrice; and certain other 
works by that delightful and prolific person Ignoto Fioren- 
tino, who here, and in the next room, which we now enter, 
is at his best. 

This next priceless room is chiefly memorable for Ver- 
rocchio and Mino da Fiesole. We come to Verrocchio at 
once, on the left, where his relief of the death of Francesca 
Pitti Tornabuoni (on a tiny bed only half as long as her- 
self) may be seen. This poor lady, who died in childbirth, 
was the wife of Giovanni Tornabuoni, and he it was who 
employed Ghirlandaio to make the frescoes in the choir of 
S. Maria Novella. (I ought, however, to state that Miss 
Cruttwell, in her monograph on Verrocchio, questions both 
the subject and the artist.) Close by we have two more 
works by Verrocchio — No. 180, a marble relief of the 
Madonna and Child, the Madonna's dress fastened by the 
prettiest of brooches, and She herself possessing a dainty 
sad head and the long fingers that Verrocchio so favoured, 
which we find again in the famous " Gentildonna " (No. 181) 
next it — that Florentine lady with flowers in her bosom, 
whose contours are so exquisite and who has such pretty 
shoulders. 

Near by is the little eager S. John the Baptist as a boy by 
Antonio Rossellino (1427-1478), and on the next wall the 
same sculptor's circular relief of the Madonna adoring, in 
a border of cherubs. In the middle is the masterpiece 
of Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570) : a Bacchus, so strangely 
like a genuine antique, full of Greek lightness and grace. 
And then we come back to the wall in which the door is, 
and find more works from the delicate hand of Mino da 
Fiesole, whom we in London are fortunate in being able to 




BUST OF A BOY (SOMETIMES CALLED THE BOY CHRIST) 

BY LUCA OH ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA IN THE BARGELLO 



MINO AGAIN 201 

study as near home as at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
Of Mino I have said more both at the Badia and at Fiesole. 
But here I might remark again that he was born in 1431 
and died in 1484, and was the favourite pupil of Desi- 
derio da Settignano, who was in his turn the favourite 
pupil of Donatello. 

In the little church of S. Ambrogio we have seen a tablet 
to the memory of Mino, who lies there, not far from the 
grave of Verrocchio, whom he most nearly approached in 
feeling, although their ideal type of woman differed in 
everything save the slenderness of the fingers. The Bar- 
gello has both busts and reliefs by him, all distinguished 
and sensitive and marked by Mino's profound refinement. 
The Madonna and Child in No. 232 are peculiarly beauti- 
ful and notable both for high relief and shallow relief, and 
the Child in No. 193 is even more charming. For delicacy 
and vivacity in marble portraiture it would be impossible 
to surpass the head of Rinaldo della Luna; and the two 
Medicis are wonderfully real. Everything in Mino's work 
is thoughtful and exquisite, while the unusual type of face 
which so attracted him gives him freshness too. 

This room and that next it illustrate the wealth of fine 
sculptors which Florence had in the fifteenth century, for 
the works by the unknown hands are in some cases hardly 
less beautiful and masterly than those by the known. Look, 
for example, at the fleur-de-lis over the door; at the 
Madonna and Child next it, on the right; at the girl's 
head next to that ; at the baby girl at the other end of the 
room ; and at the older boy and his pendant. But one does 
not need to come here to form an idea of the wealth of 
good sculpture. The streets alone are full of it. Every 
palace has beautiful stone- work and an escutcheon which 
often only a master could execute — as Donatello devised 



202 THE BARGELLO 

that for the Palazzo Pazzi in the Borgo degli Albizzi. On 
the great staircase of the Bargello, for example, are num- 
bers of coats of arms that could not be more beautifully- 
designed and incised. 

In the room leading from that which is memorable for 
Pollaiuolo's youth in armour is a collection of medals by all 
the best medallists, beginning, in the first case, with Pisan- 
ello. Here are his Sigismondo Malatesta, the tyrant of 
Rimini, and Isotta his wife ; here also is a portrait of Leon 
Battista Alberti, who designed and worked on the cathedral 
of Rimini as well as upon S. Maria Novella in Florence. 
On the other side of this case is the medal commemorating 
the Pazzi conspiracy. In other cases are pretty Italian 
ladies, such as Julia Astalla, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, with her 
hair in curls just as in Ghirlandaio's frescoes, Costanza 
Rucellai, Leonora Altoviti, Maria Poliziano, and Maria 
de' Mucini. 

And so we come to the della Robbias, without whose 
joyous, radiant art Florence would be only half as beautiful 
as she is. Of these exquisite artists Luca, the uncle, born 
in 1400, was by far the greatest. Andrea, his nephew, born 
in 1435, came next, and then Giovanni. Luca seems to have 
been a serious, quiet man who would probably have made 
sculpture not much below his friend Donatello's had not he 
chanced on the discovery of a means of colouring and glazing 
terra-cotta. Examples of this craft are seen all over Flor- 
ence both within doors and out, as the pages of this book 
indicate, but at the Bargello is the greatest number of small 
pieces gathered together. I do not say there is anything here 
more notable than the Annunciation attributed to Andrea 
at the Spedale degli Innocenti, while of course, for most 
people, his putti on the facade of that building are the della 
Robbia symbol; nor is there anything finer than Luca's 



THE DELLA ROBBIAS 203 

work at Impruneta ; but as a collection of sweetness and 
gentle domestic beauty these Bargello reliefs are unequalled, 
both in character and in volume. Here you see what one 
might call Roman Catholic art — that is, the art which at 
once gives pleasure to simple souls and symbolizes benev- 
olence and safety — carried out to its highest power. 
Tenderness, happiness, and purity are equally suggested by 
every relief here. Had Luca and Andrea been entrusted 
with the creation of the world it would be a paradise. 
And, as it is, it seems to me impossible but that they left 
the world sweeter than they found it. Such examples of 
affection and solicitude as they were continually bringing 
to the popular vision must have engendered kindness. 

I have noted as especially beautiful in the first room Nos. 
4, 6, 12, 23, by Andrea ; and 10 and £l, by Luca. These, 
by the way, are the Bargello ascriptions, but the experts do 
not always agree. Herr Bode, for example, who has studied 
the della Robbias with passionate thoroughness, gives the 
famous head of the boy, which is in reproduction one of the 
best-known works of plastic art, to Luca ; but the Bargello 
director says Andrea. In Herr Bode's fascinating mono- 
graph, "Florentine Sculptors of the Renaissance,'' he goes 
very carefully into the differences between the uncle and 
the nephew, master and pupil. In all the groups, for ex- 
ample, he says that Luca places the Child on the Madonna's 
left arm, Andrea on the right. In the second room I have 
marked particularly Nos. 21, 28, and 31, by Luca, 28 being a 
deeper relief than usual, and the Madonna not adoring but 
holding and delighting in one of the most adorable of Babies. 
Observe in the reproduction of this relief in this volume 
how the Mother's fingers sink into the child's flesh. Luca 
was the first sculptor to notice that. No. 31 is the lovely 
Madonna of the Rose Bower. But nothing gives me 



204 THE BARGELLO 

more pleasure than the boy's head of which I have just 
spoken, attributed to Andrea and also reproduced here. 
The "Giovane Donna" which pairs with it has extraor- 
dinary charm and delicacy too. I have marked also, 
by Andrea, Nos. 71 and 76. Giovanni della Robbia's best 
is perhaps No. 15, in the other room. 

One curious thing that one notes about della Robbia 
pottery is its inability to travel. It was made for the church 
and it should remain there. Even in the Bargello, where 
there is an ancient environment, it loses half its charm ; 
while in an English museum it becomes hard and cold. 
But in a church to which the poor carry their troubles, 
with a dim light and a little incense, it is perfect, far 
beyond painting in its tenderness and symbolic value. I 
speak of course of the Madonnas and altar-pieces. When 
the della Robbias worked for the open air — as in the f acade 
of the Children's Hospital, or at the Certosa, or in the Loggia 
di San Paolo, opposite S. Maria Novella, where one may see 
the beautiful meeting of S. Francis and S. Dominic, by 
Andrea — they seem, in Italy, to have fitness enough ; but 
it would not do to transplant any of these reliefs to an 
English facade. There was once, I might add, in Florence 
a Via della Robbia, but it is now the Via Nazionale. I 
suppose this injustice to the great potters came about in 
the eight een-sixties, when popular political enthusiasm 
led to every kind of similar re-naming. 

In the room leading out of the second della Robbia room 
is a collection of vestments and brocades bequeathed by 
Baron Giulio Franchetti, where you may see, dating from 
as far back as the sixth century, designs that for beauty 
and splendour and durability put to shame most of the 
stuffs now woven ; but the top floor of the Museo Archeo- 
logico in the Via della Colonna is the chief home in Florence 
of such treasures. 



SOUTH KENSINGTON SCULPTURE 205 

There are other beautiful things in the Bargello of which 
I have said nothing — a gallery of mediaeval bells most 
exquisitely designed, from famous steeples ; cases of carved 
ivory ; and many of such treasures as one sees at the Cluny 
in Paris. But it is for its courtyard and for the Renaissance 
sculpture that one goes to the Bargello, and returns again 
and again to the Bargello, and it is for these that one 
remembers it. 

On returning to London the first duty of everyone who 
has drunk deep of delight in the Bargello is to visit that 
too much neglected treasure-house of our own, the Victoria 
and Albert Museum at South Kensington. There may 
be nothing at South Kensington as fine as the Bargello's 
finest, but it is a priceless collection and is superior to the 
Bargello in one respect at any rate, for it has a relief 
attributed to Leonardo. Here also is an adorable Madonna 
and laughing Child, beyond anything in Florence for sheer 
gaiety if not mischief, which the South Kensington au- 
thorities call a Rossellino but Herr Bode a Desiderio da 
Settignano. The room is rich too in Donatello and in 
Verrocchio, and altogether it makes a perfect footnote 
to the Bargello. It also has within call learned gentle- 
men who can give intimate information about the ex- 
hibits, which the Bargello badly lacks. The Louvre and 
the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin — but particularly 
the Kaiser Friedrich since Herr Bode, who has such a pas- 
sion for this period, became its director — have priceless 
treasures, and in Paris I have had the privilege of seeing 
the little but exquisite collection formed by M. Gustave 
Dreyfus, dominated by that mirthful Italian child which 
the Bargello authorities consider to be by Donatello, but 
Herr Bode gives to Desiderio. At the Louvre, in galleries 
on the ground floor gained through the Egyptian sculpture 



206 THE BAKGELLO 

section and opened very capriciously, may be seen the 
finest of the prisoners from Michelangelo's tomb for Pope 
Julius ; Donatello's youthful Baptist ; a Madonna and 
Children by Agostino di Duccio, whom we saw at the 
Museum of the Cathedral ; an early coloured terra-cotta by 
Luca della Robbia, and No. 316, a terra-cotta Madonna 
and Child without ascription, which looks very like Ros- 
sellino. 

In addition to originals there are at South Kensington 
casts of many of the Bargello's most valuable possessions, 
such as Donatello's and Verrocchio's Davids, Donatello's 
Baptist and many heads, Mino da Fiesole's best Madonna, 
Pollaiuolo's Young Warrior, and so forth; so that to 
loiter there is most attractively to recapture something of 
the Florentine feeling. 



CHAPTER XV 

S. CROCE 

An historic piazza — Marble fagades — Florence's Westminster Abbey 

— Galileo's ancestor and Ruskin — Benedetto's pulpit — Michelangelo's 
tomb — A fond lady — Donatello's " Annunciation " — Giotto's frescoes 

— S. Francis — Donatello magnanimous — The gifted Alberti — Desi- 
derio's great tomb — The sacristy — The Medici chapel — The Pazzi 

chapel — Old Jacopo desecrated — A restoration. 

THE piazza S. Croce now belongs to children. The 
church is at one end, bizarre buildings are on either 
side, the Dante statue is in the middle, and harsh gravel 
covers the ground. Everywhere are children, all dirty, and 
all rather squalid and mostly bow-legged, showing that 
they were of the wrong age to take their first steps on Holy 
Saturday at noon. The long brown building on the right, 
as we face S. Croce, is a seventeenth-century palazzo. For 
the rest, the architecture is chiefly notable for green 
shutters. 

The frigid and florid Dante memorial, which was un- 
veiled in 1865 on the six hundredth anniversary of the 
poet's birthday, looks gloomily upon what once was a scene 
of splendour and animation, for in 1469 Piero de' Medici 
devised here a tournament in honour of the betrothal of 
Lorenzo to Clarice Orsini. The Queen of the tournament 
was Lucrezia Donati, and she awarded the first prize to 
Lorenzo. The tournament cost 10,000 gold florins and 

207 



208 S. CROCE 

was very splendid, Verrocchio and other artists being 
called in to design costumes, and it is thought that 
Pollaiuolo's terra-cotta of the Young Warrior in the Bar- 
gello represents the comely Giuliano de' Medici as he ap- 
peared in his armour in the lists. The piazza was the 
scene also of that famous tournament given by Lorenzo 
de' Medici for Giuliano in 1474, of which the beautiful 
Simonetta was the Queen of Beauty, and to which, as I have 
said elsewhere, we owe Botticelli's two most famous pic- 
tures. Difficult to reconstruct in the Piazza any of those 
glories to-day. 

The new fagade of S. Croce, endowed not long since by an 
Englishman, has been much abused, but it is not so bad. 
As the front of so beautiful and wonderful a church it may 
be inadequate, but as a structure of black and white marble 
it will do. To my mind nothing satisfactory can now be 
done in this medium, which, unless it is centuries old, is 
always harsh and cuts the sky like a knife, instead of resting 
against it as architecture should. But when it is old, as 
at S. Miniato, it is right. 

S. Croce is the Westminster Abbey of Florence. Michel- 
angelo lies here, Machiavelli lies here, Galileo lies here ; 
and here Giotto painted, Donatello carved, and Brunelleschi 
planned. Although outside the church is disappointing, 
within it is the most beautiful in Florence. It has the 
boldest arches, the best light at all seasons, the most at- 
tractive floor — of gentle red — and an apse almost wholly 
made of coloured glass. Not a little of its charm comes 
from the delicate passage-way that runs the whole course 
of the church high up on the yellow walls. It also has 
the finest circular window in Florence, over the main 
entrance, a "Deposition" by Ghiberti. 

The lightness was indeed once so intense that no fewer 
than twenty-two windows have had to be closed. The cir- 




INTERIOR OF S CROCE 



THE OLD GALILEO 209 

cular window over the altar upon which a new roof seems 
to be intruding is in reality the interloper : the roof is the 
original one, and the window was cut later, in defiance of 
good architecture, by Vasari, who, since he was a pupil 
of Michelangelo, should have known better. To him was 
entrusted the restoration of the church in the middle of the 
sixteenth century. 

The original architect of the modern S. Croce was the 
same Arnolfo di Cambio, or Lapo, who began the Duomo. 
He had some right to be chosen since his father, Jacopo, 
or Lapo, a German, was the builder of the most famous of 
all the Franciscan churches — that at Assisi, which was 
begun while S. Francis was still living. And Giotto, who 
painted in that church his most famous frescoes, depicting 
scenes in the life of S. Francis, succeeded Arnolfo here, as 
at the Duomo, with equal fitness. Arnolfo began S. Croce 
in 1294, the year that the building of the Duomo was 
decided upon, as a reply to the new Dominican Church of 
S. Maria Novella, and to his German origin is probably 
due the Northern impression which the interiors both of S. 
Croce and the Duomo convey. 

The first thing to examine in S. Croce is the floor-tomb, 
close to the centre door, upon which Ruskin wrote one 
of his most characteristic passages. The tomb is of an 
ancestor of Galileo (who lies close by, but beneath a florid 
monument), and it represents a mediaeval scholarly figure 
with folded hands. Ruskin writes : "That worn face is 
still a perfect portrait of the old man, though like one 
struck out at a venture, with a few rough touches of a 
master's chisel. And that falling drapery of his cap is, in 
its few lines, faultless, and subtle beyond description. And 
now, here is a simple but most useful test of your capacity 
for understanding Florentine sculpture or painting. If you 



210 S. CROCE 

can see that the lines of that cap are both right, and lovely ; 
that the choice of the folds is exquisite in its ornamental 
relations of line ; and that the softness and ease of them is 
complete, — though only sketched with a few dark touches, 
— then you can understand Giotto's drawing, and Botti- 
celli's; Donatello's carving and Luca's. But if you see 
nothing in this sculpture, you will see nothing in theirs, of 
theirs. Where they choose to imitate flesh, or silk, or to 
play any vulgar modern trick with marble — (and they 
often do) — whatever, in a word, is French, or American, or 
Cockney, in their work, you can see ; but what is Floren- 
tine, and for ever great — unless you can see also the beauty 
of this old man in his citizen's cap, — you will see never." 

The passage is in "Mornings in Florence," which begins 
with S. Croce and should be read by everyone visiting the 
city. And here let me advise another companion for this 
church : a little dark enthusiast, in a black skull cap, 
named Alfred Branconi, who is usually to be found just 
inside the doors, but may be secured as a guide by a post- 
card to the church. Signor Branconi knows S. Croce and 
he loves it, and he has the further qualifications of knowing 
all Florence too and speaking excellent English, which he 
taught himself. 

The S. Croce pulpit, which is by Benedetto da Maiano, 
is a satisfying thing, accomplished both in proportions and 
workmanship, with panels illustrating scenes in the life of 
S. Francis. These are all most gently and persuasively 
done, influenced, of course, by the Baptistery doors, but 
individual too, and full of a kindred sweetness and liveliness. 
The scenes are the "Confirmation of the Franciscan Or- 
der" (the best, I think); the "Burning of the Books"; 
the "Stigmata," which we shall see again in the church, 
in fresco, for here we are all dedicated to the saint of 



THE TOMB OF MICHELANGELO 211 

Assisi, not yet having come upon the stern S. Dominic, the 
ruler at S. Marco and S. Maria Novella; the "Death of 
S. Francis," very real and touching, which we shall also 
see again; and the execution of certain Franciscans. 
Benedetto, who was also an architect and made the plan 
of the Strozzi palace, was so unwilling that anything 
should mar the scheme of his pulpit, that after strengthen- 
ing this pillar with the greatest care and thoroughness, he 
hollowed it and placed the stairs inside. 

The first tomb on the right, close to this pulpit, is Michel- 
angelo's, a mass of allegory, designed by his friend Vasari, 
the author of the "Lives of the Artists," the reading of 
which is perhaps the best preparation for the understand- 
ing of Florence. "If life pleases us," Michelangelo once 
said, "we ought not to be grieved by death, which comes 
from the same Giver." Michelangelo had intended the 
Pieta, now in the Duomo, to stand above his grave ; but 
Vasari, who had a little of the Pepys in his nature, thought 
to do him greater honour by this ornateness. The artist 
was laid to his rest in 1564, but not before his body was 
exhumed, by his nephew, at Rome, where the great man 
had died, and a series of elaborate ceremonies had been 
performed, which Vasari, who is here trustworthy enough, 
describes minutely. All the artists in Florence vied in 
celebrating the dead master in memorial paintings for 
his catafalque and its surroundings, which have now 
perished ; but probably the loss is not great, except as an 
example of homage, for that was a bad period. How bad it 
was may be a little gauged by Vasari's tributory tomb and 
his window over the high altar. 

Opposite Michelangelo's tomb, on the pillar, is the pretty 
but rather Victorian "Madonna del Latte," surrounded 
by angels, by Bernardo Rossellino (1409-1464), brother of 



212 S. CROCE 

the author of the great tomb at S. Miniato. This pretty 
relief was commissioned as a family memorial by that 
Francesco Nori, the close friend of Lorenzo de* Medici, 
who was killed in the Duomo during the Pazzi conspiracy 
in his effort to save Lorenzo from the assassins. 

The tomb of Alfieri, the dramatist, to which we now 
come, was erected at the cost of his mistress, the Countess 
of Albany, who herself sat to Canova for the figure of 
bereaved Italy. This curious and unfortunate woman 
became, at the age of nineteen, the wife of the Young 
Pretender, twenty-seven years after the '45, and led a 
miserable existence with him (due chiefly to his depravity, 
but a little, she always held, to the circumstance that they 
chose Good Friday for their wedding day) until Alfieri fell 
in love with her and offered his protection. Together she 
and the poet remained, apparently contented with each 
other and received by society, even by the English Royal 
family, until Alfieri died, in 1803, when after exclaiming 
that she had lost all — "consolations, support, society, 
all, all !" — and establishing this handsome memorial, she 
selected the French artist Fabre to fill the aching void in 
her fifty-years-old heart ; and Fabre not only filled it until 
her death in 1824, but became the heir of all that had 
been bequeathed to her by both the Stuart and Alfieri. 
Such was the Countess of Albany, to whom human affec- 
tion was so necessary. She herself is buried close by, in 
the chapel of the Castellani. 

Mrs. Piozzi, in her "Glimpses of Italian Society," 
mentions seeing in Florence in 1785 the unhappy Pretender. 
Though old and sickly, he went much into society, sported 
the English arms and livery, and wore the garter. 

Other tombs in the right aisle are those of Machiavelli, 
the statesman and author of "The Prince," and Rossini, 




MONUMENT TO CARLO MARZUPPINI 

BY DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO IN S. CROCE 



DONATELLO'S " ANNUNCIATION " 213 

the composer of "William Tell," who died in Paris in 1868, 
but was brought here for burial. These tombs are mod- 
ern and of no artistic value, but there is near them a fine 
fifteenth-century example in the monument by Bernardo 
Rossellino to another statesman and author, Leonardo 
Bruni, known as Aretino, who wrote the lives of Dante 
and Petrarch and a Latin history of Florence, a copy of 
which was placed on his heart at his funeral. This tomb 
is considered to be Rossellino's masterpiece ; but there is 
one opposite by another hand which dwarfs it. 

There is also a work of sculpture near it, in the same 
wall, which draws away the eyes — Donatello's "Annuncia- 
tion." The experts now think this to belong to the sculp- 
tor's middle period, but Vasari thought it earlier, and 
makes it the work which had most influence in estab- 
lishing his reputation ; while according to the archives 
it was placed in the church before Donatello was living. 
Vasari ought to be better informed upon this point than 
usual, since it was he who was employed in the sixteenth 
century to renovate S. Croce, at which time the chapel 
for whose altar the relief was made — that of the Caval- 
canti family — was removed. The relief now stands unre- 
lated to anything. Every detail of it should be examined ; 
but Alfred Branconi will see to that. The stone is the 
grey pietra serena of Fiesole, and Donatello has plentifully 
but not too plentifully, lightened it with gold, which is 
exactly what all artists who used this medium for sculpture 
should have done. By a pleasant tactful touch the de- 
signer of the modern Donatello monument in S. Lorenzo 
has followed the master's lead. 

Almost everything of Donatello's that one sees is in turn 
the best ; but standing before this lovely work one is more 
than commonly conscious of being in the presence of a 



214 S. CROCE 

wonderful creator. The Virgin is wholly unlike any other 
woman, and She is surprising and modern even for Dona- 
tello with his vast range. The charming terra-cotta boys 
above are almost without doubt from the same hand, but 
they cannot have been made for this monument. 

To the della Robbias we come in the Castellani chapel 
in the right transept, which has two full-length statues by 
either Luca or Andrea, in the gentle glazed medium, of 
S. Frances and S. Bernard, quite different from any- 
thing we have seen or shall see, because isolated. The 
other full-size figures by these masters — such as those at 
Impruneta — are placed against the wall. The S. Ber- 
nard, on the left as one enters the chapel, is far the finer. 
It surely must be one of the most beautiful male draped 
figures in the world. 

The next chapel, at the end of the transept, was once 
enriched by Giotto frescoes, but they no longer exist. 
There are, however, an interesting but restored series of 
scenes in the life of the Virgin by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's 
godson ; a Madonna ascending to heaven, by Mainardi, 
who was Ghirlandaio's pupil, and so satisfactory a one that 
he was rewarded by the hand of his master's sister ; and a 
pretty piece of Gothic sculpture with the Christ Child upon 
it. Hereabouts, I may remark, we have continually to be 
walking over floor-tombs, now ruined beyond hope, their 
ruin being perhaps the cause of a protecting rail being 
placed round the others ; although a floor-tomb should 
have, I think, a little wearing from the feet of worshippers, 
just to soften the lines. Those at the Certosa are, for 
example, far too sharp and clean. 

Let us complete the round of the church before we 
examine the sacristy, and go now to the two chapels, where 
Giotto may be found at his best, although restored too, on 



GIOTTO'S FRESCOES 215 

this side of the high altar. The Peruzzi chapel has scenes 
from the lives of the two S. Johns, the Baptist, and the 
Evangelist : all rather too thoroughly re-painted, although 
following Giotto's groundwork closely enough to retain 
much of their interest and value. And here once again 
one should consult the "Mornings in Florence," where the 
wilful discerning enthusiast is, like his revered subject, also 
at his best. Giotto's thoughtfulness could not be better 
illustrated than in S. Croce. One sees him, as ever, think- 
ing of everything : not a very remarkable attribute of the 
fresco painter since then, but very remarkable then, when 
any kind of facile saintliness sufficed. Signor Bianchi, who 
found these paintings under the whitewash in 1853, and 
restored them, overdid his part, there is no doubt ; but as 
I have said, their interest is unharmed, and it is that which 
one so delights in. Look, for instance, at the attitude of 
Drusiana, suddenly twitched by S. John back again into 
this vale of tears, while her bier is on its way to the 
cemetery outside the pretty city. "Am I really to live 
again?" she so plainly says to the inexorable miracle- 
worker. The dancing of Herodias' daughter, which offered 
Giotto less scope, is original too — original not because it 
came so early, but because Giotto's mind was original and 
innovating and creative. The musician is charming. The 
last scene of all is a delightful blend of religious fervour 
and reality : the miraculous ascent from the tomb, through 
an elegant Florentine loggia, to everlasting glory, in a 
blaze of gold, and Christ and an apostle leaning out of 
heaven with outstretched hands to pull the saint in, as 
into a boat. Such a Christ as that could not but be be- 
lieved in. 

In the next chapel, the Bardi, we find Giotto at work on 
a life of S. Francis, and here again Ruskin is essential. It 



216 S. CROCE 

was a task which, since this church was the great effort of 
the Florentine Franciscans, would put an artist upon his 
mettle, and Giotto set the chosen incidents before the 
observers with the discretion and skill of the great biog- 
rapher that he was, and not only that, but the great Assisi 
decorator that he was. No choice could have been better 
at any time in the history of art. Giotto chose the follow- 
ing scenes, one or two of which coincide with those on 
Benedetto da Maiano's pulpit, which came of course many 
years later: the "Confirmation of the Rules of the Fran- 
ciscans," "S. Francis Before the Sultan and the Magi," 
"S. Francis Sick and Appearing to the Bishop of Assisi," 
"S. Francis Fleeing from His Father 's House and His 
Reception by the Bishop of Assisi," and the "Death of 
S. Francis." Giotto's Assisi frescoes, which preceded these, 
anticipate them ; but in some cases these are considered to 
be better, although in others not so good. It is generally 
agreed that the death scene is the best. Note the charac- 
teristic touch by which Giotto makes one of the monks at 
the head of the bed look up at the precise moment when 
the saint dies, seeing him being received into heaven. 
According to Vasari, one of the two monks (on the ex- 
treme left, as I suppose), is Giotto's portrait of the archi- 
tect of the church, Arnolfo. The altar picture, consisting 
of many more scenes in the life of S. Francis, is often attrib- 
uted to Cimabue, Giotto's master but probably is by 
another hand. In one of these scenes the saint is found 
preaching to what must be the most attentive birds on 
record. The figures on the ceiling represent Poverty, 
Chastity, and Obedience, which all Franciscans are pledged 
to observe. The glass is coeval with the building, which 
has been described as the most perfect Gothic chapel in 
existence. 



CHRIST AND " PEASANT " 217 

The founder of this chapel was Ridolfo de' Bardi, whose 
family early in the fourteenth century bade fair to become 
as powerful as the Medici, and by the same means, their 
business being banking and money-lending, in association 
with the founders of the adjoining chapel, the Peruzzi. 
Ridolfo's father died in 1310, and his son, who had become 
a Franciscan, in 1327 ; and the chapel was built, and Giotto 
probably painted the frescoes, soon after the father's death. 
Both the Bardi and Peruzzi were brought low by our 
King Edward III, who borrowed from them money with 
which to fight the French, at Crecy and Poitiers, and 
omitted to repay it. 

The chapels in the left transept are less interesting, ex- 
cept perhaps to students of painting in its early days. In 
the chapel at the end we find DonatehVs wooden crucifix 
which led to that friendly rivalry on the part of Brunelles- 
chi, the story of which is one of the best in all Vasari. 
Donatello, having finished this wooden crucifix, and being 
unusually satisfied with it, asked Brunelleschi's opinion, 
confidently expecting praise. But Brunelleschi, who was 
sufficiently close a friend to say what he thought, replied 
that the type was too rough and common : it was not Christ 
but a peasant. Christ, of course, was a peasant ; but by 
peasant Brunelleschi meant a stupid, dull man. Dona- 
tello, chagrined, had recourse to what has always been a 
popular retort to critics, and challenged him to make a 
better. Brunelleschi took it very quietly : he said nothing 
in reply, but secretly for many months, in the intervals of 
his architecture, worked at his own version, and then one 
day, when it was finished, invited Donatello to dinner, 
stopping at the Mercato Vecchio to get some eggs and other 
things. These he gave Donatello to carry, and sent him on 
before him to the studio, where the crucifix was standing 



218 S. CROCE 

unveiled. When Brunelleschi arrived he found the eggs 
scattered and broken on the floor and Donatello before his 
carving in an ecstasy of admiration. "But what are we 
going to have for dinner ? " the host inquired. " Dinner ! " 
said Donatello; "I've had all the dinner I require. To 
thee it is given to carve Christ s : to me only peasants." 
No one should forget this pretty story, either here or at S. 
Maria Novella, where Brunelleschi's crucifix now is. 

The flexible Siena iron grille of this end chapel dates 
from 1335. Note its ivy border. 

On entering the left aisle we find the tombs of Cherubini, 
the composer, Raphael Morghen, the engraver, and that 
curious example of the Florentine universalist, whose figure 
we saw under the Uffizi, Leon Battista Alberti (1405-1472), 
architect, painter, author, mathematician, scholar, conver- 
sationalist, aristocrat, and friend of princes. His chief 
work in Florence is the Rucellai palace and the fagade of 
S. Maria Novella, but he was greater as an influence than 
creator, and his manuals on architecture, painting, and 
the study of perspective helped to bring the arts to perfec- 
tion. It is at Rimini that he was perhaps most wonderful. 
Lorenzo de' Medici greatly valued his society, and he was 
a leader in the Platonic Academy. But the most human 
achievement to his credit h his powerful plea for using 
the vernacular in literature, rather than concealing one's 
best thoughts, as was fashionable before his protest, in 
Latin. So much for Alberti's intellectual side. Physically 
he was remarkable too, and one of his accomplishments was 
to jump over a man standing upright, while he was also able 
to throw a coin on to the highest tower, even, I suppose, the 
Campanile, and ride any horse, however wild. At the 
Bargello may be seen Alberti's portrait, on a medal de- 
signed by Pisanello. The old medals are indeed the best 




DAVID 

FROM THE MARBLE STATUE BY MICHELANGELO IN THE ACCADEMTA 

{A replica of this statue in marble is outside the Palazzo Vecchio 
and in bronze in the Piazzale Michelangelo) 



DESIDERIO'S GREAT TOMB 219 

authority for the lineaments of the great men of the Renais- 
sance, better far than paint. At South Kensington thou- 
sands may be seen, either in the original or in reproduction. 

In the right aisle we saw Bernardo Rossellino's tomb of 
Leonardo Bruni ; in the left is that of Brum's successor as 
Secretary of State, Carlo Marsuppini, by Desiderio da Set- 
tignano, which is high among the most beautiful monu- 
ments that exist. "Faine, faine !" says Alfred Branconi, 
with his black eyes dimmed ; and this though he has seen it 
every day for years and explained its beauties in the same 
words. Everything about it is beautiful, as the photo- 
graph which I give in this volume will help the reader to 
believe : proportions, figures, and tracery ; but I still con- 
sider Mino's monument to TJgo in the Badia the finest 
Florentine example of the gentler memorial style, as con- 
trasted with the severe Michelangelesque manner. Mino, 
it must be remembered, was Desiderio's pupil, as Desiderio 
was Donatello's. Note how Desiderio, by an inspiration, 
opened the leaf work at each side of the sarcophagus and 
instantly the great solid mass of marble became light, 
almost buoyant. Never can a few strokes of the chisel 
have had so transforming an effect. There is some doubt 
as to whether the boys are just where the sculptor set 
them, and the upper ones with their garlands are thought 
to be a later addition ; but we are never likely to know. 
The returned visitor from Florence will like to be reminded 
that, as of so many others of the best Florentine sculptures, 
there is a cast of this at South Kensington. 

The last tomb of the highest importance in the church 
is that of Galileo, the astronomer, who died in 1642 ; but 
it is not interesting as a work of art. In the centre of the 
church is a floor-tomb by Ghiberti, with a bronze figure of 
a famous Franciscan, Francesco Sansoni da Brescia. 



220 * S. CROCE 

Next the sacristy. Italian priests apparently have no 
resentment against inquisitive foreigners who are led into 
their dressing-rooms while sumptuous and significant vest- 
ments are being donned ; but I must confess to feeling it 
for them, and if my impressions of the S. Croce sacristy 
are meagre and confused it is because of a certain delicacy 
that I experienced in intruding upon their rites. For on 
both occasions when I visited the sacristy there were 
several priests either robing or disrobing. Apart from a 
natural disinclination to invade privacy, I am so poor a 
Roman Catholic as to be in some doubt as to whether one 
has a right to be so near such a mystery at all. But 
I recollect that in this sacristy are treasures of wood and 
iron — the most beautiful intarsia wainscotting I ever saw, 
by Giovanni di Michele, with a frieze of wolves and foliage, 
and fourteenth-century iron gates to the little chapel, pure 
Gothic in design, with a little rose window at the top, deli- 
cate beyond words : all which things once again turn the 
thoughts to this wonderful Italy of the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth century, when not even the best was good enough for 
those who built churches, but something miraculous was 
demanded from every craftsman. 

At the end of the passage in which the sacristy is 
situated is the exquisite little Cappella Medici, which 
Michelozzo, the architect of S. Marco and the Palazzo 
Medici, and for a while Donatello's partner, built for his 
friend Cosimo de' Medici, who though a Dominican in his 
cell at S. Marco was a Franciscan here, but by being 
equally a patron dissociated himself from partisanship. 
Three treasures in particular does this little temple hold : 
Giotto's " Coronation of the Virgin " ; the della Robbia 
altar relief, and Mino da Fiesole's tabernacle. Giotto's 
picture, which is signed, once stood as altar-piece in the 



THE MEDICI CHAPEL 221 

Baroncelli chapel of the church proper. In addition to the 
beautiful della Robbia altar-piece, so happy and holy — 
which Alfred Branconi boldly calls Luca — there is over the 
door Christ between two angels, a lovely example of the 
same art. For a subtler, more modern and less religious 
mind, we have but to turn to the tabernacle by Mino, every 
inch of which is exquisite. 

On the same wall is a curious thing. In the eighteen- 
sixties died a Signor Lombardi, who owned certain reliefs 
which he believed to be Donatello's. When his monu- 
ment was made these ancient works were built into them 
and here and there gilded (for it is a wicked world and 
there was no taste at that time). One's impulse is not to 
look at this encroaching piece of novelty at all ; but one 
should resist that feeling, because, on examination, the 
Madonna and Children above Signor Lombardi's head be- 
come exceedingly interesting. Her hands are the work of 
a great artist, and they are really holding the Child. Why 
this should not be an early Donatello I do not see. 

The cloisters of S. Croce are entered from the piazza, 
just to the right of the church : the first, a little ornate, 
by Arnolfo, and the second, until recently used as a bar- 
racks but now being restored to a more pacific end, by 
Brunelleschi, and among the most perfect of his works. 
Brunelleschi is also the designer of the Pazzi chapel in the 
first cloisters. The severity of the facade is delightfully 
softened and enlivened by a frieze of mischievous cherubs' 
heads, the joint work of Donatello and Desiderio. Dona- 
tello's are on the right, and one sees at once that his was 
the bolder, stronger haDd. Look particularly at the laugh- 
ing head fourth from the right. But that one of Desiderio's 
over the middle columns has much charm and power. The 
doors, from Brunelleschi's own hand, in a doorway perfect 



222 S. CROCE 

in scale, are noble and worthy. The chapel itself I find 
too severe and a little fretted by its della Robbias and the 
multiplicity of circles. It is called Brunelleschi's master- 
piece, but I prefer both the Badia of Fiesole and the Old 
Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, and I remember with more pleasure 
the beautiful doorway leading from the Arnolfo cloisters 
to the Brunelleschi cloisters, which probably is his too. 
The della Robbia reliefs, once one can forgive them for 
being here, are worth study. Nothing could be more 
charming (or less conducive to a methodical literary 
morning) than the angel who holds S. Matthew's ink pot. 
But I think my favourite of all is the pensive apostle who 
leans his cheek on his hand and his elbow on his book. 
This figure alone proves what a sculptor Luca was* apart 
altogether from the charm of his mind and the fascination 
of his chosen medium. 

This chapel was once the scene of a gruesome ceremony. 
Old Jacopo Pazzi, the head of the family at the time of 
the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici, after being hanged 
from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio, was buried here. 
Some short while afterwards Florence was inundated by 
rain to such an extent that the vengeance of God was 
inferred, and, casting about for a reason, the Florentines 
decided that it was because Jacopo had been allowed to 
rest in sacred soil. A mob therefore rushed to S. Croce, 
broke open his tomb and dragged his body through the 
streets, stopping on their way at the Pazzi palace to knock 
on the door with his skull. He was then thrown into the 
swollen Arno and borne way by the tide. 

In the old refectory of the convent are now a number of 
pictures and fragments of sculpture. The "Last Supper," 
by Taddeo Gaddi, on the wall, is notable for depicting 
Judas, who had no shrift at the hands of the painters, with- 



RESTORED CLOISTERS 223 

out a halo. Castagno and Ghirlandaio, as we shall see, 
under similar circumstances, placed him on the wrong side 
of the table. In either case, but particularly perhaps in 
Taddeo's picture, the answer to Christ's question, which 
Leonardo at Milan makes so dramatic, is a foregone con- 
clusion. The "Crucifixion" on the end wall, at the left, 
is interesting as having been painted for the Porta S. Gallo 
(in the Piazza Cavour) and removed here. All the gates of 
Florence had religious frescoes in them, some of which 
still remain. The great bronze bishop is said to be by 
Donatello and to have been meant for Or San Michele ; 
but one does not much mind. 

One finds occasion to say so many hard things of the 
Florentine disregard of ancient art that it is peculiarly a 
pleasure to see the progress that is being made in restoring 
Brunelleschi's perfect cloisters at S. Croce to their original 
form. When they were turned into barracks the Loggia 
was walled in all round and made into a series of rooms. 
These walls are now gradually coming away, the lovely 
pillars being again isolated, the chimneys removed, and 
everything lightly washed. Grass has also been sown in 
the great central square. The crumbling of the decorative 
medals in the spandrels of the cloisters cannot of course 
be restored ; but one does not complain of such natural 
decay as that. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE ACCADEMIA 

Michelangelo — The David — The tomb of Julius — A contrast — Fra 
Angelico — The beatific painter — Cimabue and Giotto — Masaccio — 
Gentile da Fabriano — Domenico Ghirlandaio — Fra Angelico again — 
Fra Bartolommeo — Perugino — Botticelli — The "Prima vera" — Leo- 
nardo da Vinci and Verrocchio — Botticelli's sacred pictures — Botticini 

— Tapestries of Eden. 

THE Accademia delle Belle Arti is in the Via Ricasoli, 
that street which seen from the top of the Campa- 
nile is the straightest thing in Florence, running like a ruled 
line from the Duomo to the valley of the Mugnone. Up- 
stairs are modern painters : but upstairs I have never been. 
It is the ground-floor rooms that are so memorable, con- 
taining as they do a small but very choice collection 
of pictures illustrating the growth of Italian art, with par- 
ticular emphasis on Florentine art; the best assemblage 
of the work of Fra Angelico that exists; and a large 
gallery given up to Michelangelo's sculpture : originals and 
casts. The principal magnets that draw people here, no 
doubt, are the Fra Angelicos and Botticelli's "Prima vera" ; 
but in five at least of the rooms there is not an uninterest- 
ing picture, while the collection is so small that one can 
study it without fatigue — no little matter after the 
crowded Uffizi and Pitti. 

It is a simple matter to choose in such a book as this 

224 



MICHELANGELO'S "DAVID" 225 

the best place in which to tell something of the life story 
of, say, Giotto and Brunelleschi and the della Robbias ; for 
at a certain point their genius is found concentrated — 
Donatello's and the della Robbias* in the Bargello and 
those others' at the Duomo and Campanile. Rut with 
Michelangelo it is different, he is so distributed over the 
city — his gigantic David here, the Medici tombs at S. 
Lorenzo, his fortifications at S. Miniato, his tomb at S. 
Croce, while there remains his house as a natural focus of 
all his activities. I have, however, chosen the Medici chapel 
as the spot best suited for his biography, and therefore will 
here dwell only on the originals that are preserved about 
the David. The David himself, superb and confident, 
is the first thing you see in entering the doors of the gallery. 
He stands at the end, white and glorious, with his eyes 
steadfastly measuring his antagonist and calculating upon 
what will be his next move if the sling misdirects the stone. 
Of the objection to the statue as being not representative 
of the Biblical figure I have said something in the chapter 
on the Bargello, where several Davids come under review. 
Yet, after all that can be said against its dramatic fitness, 
the statue remains an impressive and majestic yet 
strangely human thing. There it is — a sign of what a little 
Italian sculptor with a broken nose could fashion with his 
mallet and chisel from a mass of marble four hundred and 
more years ago. 

Its history is curious. In 1501, when Michelangelo was 
twenty-six and had just returned to Florence from Rome 
with a great reputation as a sculptor, the joint authorities 
of the cathedral and the Arte della Lana offered him a huge 
block of marble that had been in their possession for thirty- 
five years, having been worked upon clumsily by a sculptor 
named Baccellino and then set aside. Michelangelo was 



226 THE ACCADEMIA 

told that if he accepted it he must carve from it a David and 
have it done in two years. He began in September, 1501, 
and finished in January, 1504, and a committee was ap- 
pointed to decide upon its position, among them being 
Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Filippino 
Lippi, Botticelli, and Andrea della Robbia. There were 
three suggested sites : the Loggia de' Lanzi ; the court- 
yard of the Palazzo Vecchio, where Verrocchio's little 
boudoir David then stood (now in the Bargello) and 
where his Cupid and dolphin now are ; and the place 
where it now stands, then occupied by Donatello's Judith 
and Holof ernes. This last was finally selected, not by 
the committee but by the determination of Michelangelo 
himself, and Judith and Holofernes were moved to the 
Loggia de' Lanzi to their present position. The David 
was set up in May, 1504, and remained there for three 
hundred and sixty-nine years, suffering no harm from the 
weather but having an arm broken in the Medici riots in 
1527. In 1873, however, it was decided that further ex- 
posure might be injurious, and so the statue was moved 
here to its frigid niche and a replica in marble afterwards 
set up in its place. Since this glorious figure is to be seen 
thrice in Florence, he may be said to have become the 
second symbol of the city, next the fleur-de-lis. 

The Tribuna del David, as the Michelangelo salon is 
called, has among other originals several figures intended 
for that tomb of Pope Julius II (whose portrait by Raphael 
we have seen at the Uffizi) which was to be the eighth 
wonder of the world, and by which the last years of the 
sculptor's life were rendered so unhappy. The story is a 
miserable one. Of the various component parts of the tomb, 
finished or unfinished, the best known is the Moses at S. 
Pietro in Vincoli at Rome, reproduced in plaster here, 






MARBLE AND LIFE 227 

in the Accademia, beneath the bronze head of its author. 
Various other parts are in Rome too ; others here ; one or 
two may be at the Bargello (although some authorities 
give these supposed Michelangelos to Vincenzo Danti) ; 
others are in the grotto of the Boboii Gardens ; and the 
Louvre has what is in some respects the finest of the 
" Prisoners." 

The first statue on the right of the entrance of the Tri- 
buna del David is a group called " Genio Vittorioso." Here 
in the old man we see rock actually turned to life ; in the 
various "Prisoners " near we see life emerging from rock ; in 
the David we forget the rock altogether. One wonders 
how Michelangelo went to work. Did the shape of the 
block of marble influence him, or did he with his mind's 
eye, the Rontgen rays of genius, see the figure within it, 
embedded in the midst, and hew and chip until it disclosed ? 
On the back of the fourth statue on the left a monkish face 
has been incised : probably some visitor to the studio. After 
looking at these originals and casts, and remembering those 
other Michelangelo sculptures elsewhere in Florence — the 
tombs of the Medici, the Brutus and the] smaller David 
— turn to the bronze head over the cast of Moses and reflect 
upon the author of it all : the profoundly sorrowful eyes 
behind which so much power and ambition and disappoint- 
ment dwelt. 

It is peculiarly interesting to walk out of the Michel- 
angelo gallery into the little room containing the Fra 
Angelicos : to pass from a great melancholy saturnine 
sculptor, the victim of the caprice of princes temporal and 
spiritual, his eyes troubled with world knowledge and world 
weariness, to the child-like celebrant of the joy of simple 
faith who painted these gay and happy pictures. Fra 
Angelico — the sweetest of all the Florentine painters — was 



228 THE ACCADEMIA 

a monk of Fiesole, whose real name was Guido Petri da 
Mugello, but becoming a Dominican he called himself 
Giovanni, and now through the sanctity and happiness of 
his brush is for all time Beato Angelico. He was born in 
1390, nearly sixty years after Giotto's, when Chaucer was 
fifty, and Richard II on the English throne. His early 
years were spent in exile from Fiesole, the brothers having 
come into difficulties with the Archbishop, but by 1418 
he was again at Fiesole, and when in 1436 Cosimo de' 
Medici, returned from exile at Venice, set his friend Michel- 
ozzo upon building the convent of S. Marco, Fra Angelico 
was fetched from Fiesole to decorate the walls. There, 
and here, in the Accademia, are his chief works assembled ; 
but he worked also at Fiesole, at Cortona, and at Rome, 
where he painted frescoes in the chapel of Nicholas V in 
the Vatican and where he died, aged sixty-eight, and was 
buried. It was while at Rome that the Pope offered him 
the priorship of S. Marco, which he declined as being un- 
worthy, but recommended Antonio," the Good Archbishop." 
— That practically is his whole life. As to his character, 
let Vasari tell us. "He would often say that whosoever 
practised art needed a quiet life and freedom from care, 
and he who occupies himself with the things of Christ ought 
always to be with Christ. . . . Some say that Fra Giovanni 
never took up his brush without first making a prayer. . . . 
He never made a crucifix when the tears did not course 
down his cheeks . ' ' The one curious thing — to me — about 
Fra Angelico is that he has not been canonized. If ever a 
son of the Church toiled for her honour and for the happi- 
ness of mankind it was he. 

There are examples of Fra Angelico's work elsewhere in 
Florence : the large picture in Room I of this gallery ; the 
large altar-piece at the Uffizi, with certain others; the 







THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT 

FROM THE PAINTING BY FRA ANGELICO IN THE ACCADEMIA 



THE HAPPY PAINTER 229 

series of mural paintings in the cells of S. Marco ; and his 
pictures will be found not only elsewhere in Florence and 
Italy but in the chief galleries of the world ; for he was 
very assiduous. We have an excellent example at the 
National Gallery, No. 663 ; but this little room gives us the 
artist and rhapsodist most completely. In looking at his 
pictures, three things in particular strike the mind : the 
skill with which he composed them ; his mastery of light ; 
and — and here he is unique — the pleasure he must have 
had in painting them. All seem to have been play ; he 
enjoyed the toil exactly as a child enjoys the labour of 
building a house with toy bricks. Nor, one feels, could he 
be depressed. Even in his Crucifixions there is a certain 
underlying happiness, due to his knowledge that the Cruci- 
fied was to rise again and ascend to Heaven and enjoy 
eternal felicity. Knowing this (as he did know it) how 
could he be wholly cast down ? You see it again in the 
Flagellation of Christ, in the series of six scenes (No. 237). 
The scourging is almost a festival. But best of all I like 
the Flight into Egypt, in No. 235. Everything here is 
joyous and (in spite of the terrible cause of the journey) 
bathed in the sunny light of the age of innocence : the 
landscape ; Joseph, younger than usual, brave and resolute 
and undismayed by the curious turn in his fortunes ; and 
Mary with the child in her arms, happy and pretty, seated 
securely on an amiable donkey that has neither bit nor 
bridle. It is when one looks at Fra Angelico that one 
understands how wise were the Old Masters to seek their 
inspiration in the life of Christ. One cannot imagine Fra 
Angelico's existence in a pagan country. Look, in No. 236, 
at the six radiant and rapturous angels clustering above the 
manger. Was there ever anything prettier ? But I am 
not sure that I do not most covet No. 250, Christ crucified 



230 THE ACCADEMIA 

and two saints, and No. 251, the Coronation of the Virgin, 
for their beauty of light. 

In the photographs No. 246 — a Deposition — is unusu- 
ally striking, but in the original, although beautiful, it is 
far less radiant than usual with this painter. It has, how- 
ever, such feeling as to make it especially memorable among 
the many treatments of this subject. What is generally 
considered the most important work in this room is the 
Last Judgment, which is certainly extraordinarily in- 
teresting, and in the hierarchy of heaven and the company 
of the blest Fra Angelico is in a very acceptable mood. 
The benignant Christ Who divides the sheep and the goats ; 
the healthy ripe-lipped Saints and Fathers who assist at the 
tribunal and have never a line of age or experience on their 
blooming cheeks ; the monks and nuns, just risen from their 
graves, who embrace each other in the meads of paradise 
with such fervour — these have much of the charm of 
little flowers. But in delineating the damned the painter 
is in strange country. It was a subject of which he knew 
nothing, and the introduction among them of monks of the 
rival order of S. Francis is mere party politics and a blot. 

There are two other rooms here, but Fra Angelico spoils 
us for them. Four panels by another Frate, but less 
radiant, Lippo Lippi, are remarkable, particularly the 
figure of the Virgin in the Annunciation; and there is a 
curious series of scenes entitled "L'Albero della Croce," by 
an Ignoto of the fourteenth century, with a Christ crucified 
in the midst and all Scripture in medallions around him, 
the tragedy of Adam and Eve at the foot (mutilated by 
some chaste pedant) being very quaint. And in Angelico's 
rooms there is a little, modest Annunciation by one of his 
school — No. 256 — which shows what a good influence he 
was, and to which the eye returns and returns. Here also,on 



A SURVEY OF ART 231 

easels, are two portraits of Vallombrosan monks by Fra Bar- 
tolommeo, serene, and very sympathetically painted, which 
cause one to regret the deterioration in Italian ecclesiastic 
physiognomy ; and Andrea del Sarto's two pretty angels, 
which one so often finds in reproduction, are here too. 

Let us now enter the first room of the collection proper 
and begin at the very beginning of Tuscan art, for this 
collection is historical and not fortuitous like that of the 
Pitti. The student may here trace the progress of Tuscan 
painting from the level to the highest peaks and downwards 
again. The Accademia was established with this purpose 
by that enlightened prince, Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, in 1784. Other pictures not wholly within his 
scheme have been added since, together with the Michel- 
angelo statues and casts ; but they do not impair the orig- 
inal idea. For the serious student the first room is of far 
the most importance, for there he may begin with Cimabue 
(1240 P-1302 ?), and Giotto (1267 P-1337), and pass steadily 
to Luca Signorelli (1450 P-1523). For the most part the 
pictures in this room appeal to the inquirer rather than 
the sight-seer ; but there is not one that is without interest, 
while three works of extraordinary charm have thoughtfully 
been enisled, on screens, for special attention — a Fra Angel- 
ico, a Fabriano, and a Ghirlandaio. Before reaching these, 
let us look at the walls. 

The first large picture, on the left, the Cimabue, marks 
the transition from Byzantine art to Italian art. Giovanni 
Cimabue, who was to be the forerunner of the new art, was 
born about 1240. At that time there was plenty of painting 
in Italy, but it was Greek, the work of artists at Constanti- 
nople (Byzantium), the centre of Christianity in the eastern 
half of the Roman Empire and the fount of ecclesiastical 
energy, and it was crude in workmanship, existing purely 



232 THE ACCADEMIA 

as an accessory of worship. Cimabue, of whom, I may say, 
almost nothing definite is known, and upon whom the de- 
lightful but casual old Vasari is the earliest authority, as 
Dante was his first eulogist, carried on the Byzantine tradi- 
tion, but breathed a little life into it. In his picture here 
we see him feeling his way from the unemotional painted 
symbols of the Faith to humanity itself. One can under- 
stand this large panel being carried (as we know the similar 
one at S. Maria Novella was) in procession and worshipped, 
but it is nearer to the icon of the Russian peasant of to- 
day than to a Raphael. The Madonna is above life ; the 
Child is a little man. This was painted, say, in 1280, as 
an altar-piece for the Badia of S. Trinita at Florence. 

Next came Giotto, Cimabue's pupil, born about 1267, 
whom we have met already as an architect, philosopher, 
and innovator ; and in the second picture in this room, 
from Giotto's brush, we see life really awakening. The 
Madonna is vivifying; the Child is nearer childhood; we 
can believe that here are veins with blood in them. 
Moreover, whereas Cimabue's angels brought masonry, 
these bring flowers. It is crude, no doubt, but it is 
enough; the new art, which was to counterfeit and even 
extend nature, has really begun ; the mystery and glory of 
painting are assured and the door open for Botticelli. 

But much had to happen first, particularly the mastery 
of the laws of perspective, and it was not (as we have seen) 
until Ghiberti had got to work on his first doors, and 
Brunelleschi was studying architecture and Uccello sitting 
up all night at his desk, that painting as we know it — 
painting of men and women " in the round " — could be done, 
and it was left for a youth who was not born until Giotto 
had been dead sixty -four years to do this first as a mas- 
ter — one Tommaso di Ser Giovanni Guido da Castel San 



ALTAR PICTURES 233 

Giovanni, known as Masaccio, or Big Tom. The three 
great names then in the evolution of Italian painting, 
a subject to which I return in Chapter XXV, on the Car- 
mine, are Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio. 

We pass on at the Accademia from Cimabue's pupil 
Giotto, to Giotto's followers, Taddeo Gaddi and Bernardo 
Daddi, and Daddi's follower Spinello Aretino, and the long 
dependent and interdependent line of painters. For the 
most part they painted altar-pieces, these early craftsmen, 
the Church being the principal patron of art. These works 
are many of them faded and so elementary as to have but 
an antiquarian interest; but think of the excitement in 
those days when the picture was at last ready, and, gay in 
its gold, was erected in the chapel ! Among the purely 
ecclesiastical works No. 137, an Annunciation by Gio- 
vanni del Biondo (second half of the fourteenth century), is 
light and cheerful, and No. 142, the Crowning of the Virgin, 
by Rosello di Jacopo Franchi (1376-1456), has some de- 
lightful details and is everywhere joyous, with a charming 
green pattern in it. The wedding scenes in No. 147 give 
us Florentine life on the mundane side with some valuable 
thoroughness, and the Pietro Lorenzetti above — scenes in 
the life of S. Umilita — is very quaint and cheery and was 
painted as early as 1 3 1 6 . The little Virgin adoring, No . 1 60, 
in the corner, by the fertile Ignoto, is charmingly pretty. 

And now for the three screens, notable among the 
screens of the galleries of Europe as holding three of the 
happiest pictures ever painted. The first is the Adora- 
tion of the Magi, by Gentile da Fabriano, an artist of 
whom one sees too little. His full name was Gentile di 
Niccol6 di Giovanni Massi, and he was born at Fabriano 
between 1360 and 1370, some twenty years before Fra 
Angelico. According to Vasari he was Fra Angelico's 



234 THE ACCADEMIA 

master, but that is now considered doubtful, and yet the 
three little scenes from the life of Christ in the predella of 
this picture are nearer Fra Angelico in spirit and charm 
than any, not by a follower, that I have seen. Gentile 
did much work at Venice before he came to Florence, in 
1422, and this picture, which is considered his masterpiece, 
was painted in 1423 for S. Trinita. He died four years 
later. Gentile was charming rather than great, and to 
this work might be applied Ruskin's sarcastic description 
of poor Ghirlandaio's frescoes, that they are mere gold- 
smith's work; and yet it is much more, for it has gaiety 
and sweetness and the nice thoughtfulness that made the 
Child a real child, interested like a child in the bald head 
of the kneeling mage; while the predella is not to be ex- 
celled in its modest, tender beauty by any in Florence ; and 
predellas, I may remark again, should never be overlooked, 
strong as the tendency is to miss them. Many a painter 
has failed in the large space or made only a perfunctory 
success, but in the small has achieved real feeling. Gentile's 
Holy Family on its way to Egypt is never to be forgot- 
ten. Not so radiant as Fra Angelico's, in the room we 
have visited out of due course, but as charming in its own 
manner — both in personages and landscape ; while the city 
to which Joseph leads the donkey (again without reins) is 
the most perfect thing out of fairyland. 

Ghirlandaio's picture, which is the neighbour of Gentile's, 
is as a whole nearer life and one of his most attractive 
works. It is, I think, excelled only by his very similar 
Adoration of the Magi at the Spedale degli Innocenti, 
which, however, it is difficult to see ; and it is far beyond 
the examples at the Uffizi, which are too hot. Of the life 
of this artist, who was Michelangelo's master, I shall speak 
in the chapter on S. Maria Novella. This picture, which 



GHIRLANDAIO 235 

represents the Adoration of the Shepherds, was painted in 
1485, when the artist was thirty-six. It is essentially 
pleasant : a religious picture on the sunny side. The Child 
is the soul of babyish content, equally amused with its 
thumb and the homage it is receiving. Close by is a gold- 
finch unafraid; in the distance is a citied valley, with a 
river winding in it; and down a neighbouring hill, on the 
top of which the shepherds feed their flocks, comes the 
imposing procession of the Magi. Joseph is more than 
commonly perplexed, and the disparity between his own 
and his wife's age, which the old masters agreed to make 
considerable, is more considerable than usual. 

Both Gentile and Ghirlandaio chose a happy subject 
and made it happier; Fra Angelico (for the third screen 
picture) chose a melancholy subject and made it happy, 
not because that was his intention, but because he could 
not help it. He had only one set of colours and one set 
of countenances, and since the colours were of the gayest 
and the countenances of the serenest, the result was bound 
to be peaceful and glad. This picture is a large "De- 
posizione della Croce," an altar-piece for S. Trinita. 
There is such joy in the painting and light in the sky that 
a child would clap his hands at it all, and not least at the 
vermilion of the Redeemer's blood. Fra Angelico gave 
thought to every touch : and his beatific holiness floods 
the work. Each of these three great pictures, I may add, 
has its original frame. 

The room which leads from this one is much less valu- 
able; but Fra Bartolommeo's Vision of S. Bernard has 
lately been brought to an easel here to give it charac- 
ter. I find this the Frate's most beautiful work. It 
may have details that are a little crude, and the pointed 
nose of the Virgin is not perhaps in accordance with the 



236 THE ACCADEMIA 

best tradition, while she is too real for an apparition; 
but the figure of the kneeling saint is masterly and the 
landscape lovely in subject and feeling. Here too is 
Fra Bartolommeo's portrait of Savonarola, in which the 
reformer is shown as personating S. Peter Martyr. The 
picture was not painted from life, but from an earlier 
portrait. Fra Bartolommeo had some reason to know what 
Savonarola was like, for he was his personal friend and a 
brother in the same convent of S. Marco, a few yards from 
the Accademia, across the square. He was born in 1475 
and was apprenticed to the painter Cosimo JEtosselli ; but 
he learned more from studying Masaccio's frescoes at the 
Carmine and the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was in 
1495 that he came under the influence of Savonarola, and 
he was the first artist to run home and burn his studies 
from the nude in response to the preacher's denunciations. 
Three years later, when Savonarola was an object of hatred 
and the convent of S. Marco was besieged, the artist was 
with him, and he then made a vow that if he lived he would 
join the order; and this promise he kept, although not 
until Savonarola had been executed. For a while, as a 
monk, he laid aside the brush, but in 1506 he resumed it 
and painted until his death, in 1517. He was buried at 
S. Marco. 

In his less regenerate days Fra Bartolommeo's greatest 
friend was the jovial Mariotto Albertinelli, whose rather 
theatrical Annunciation hangs between a number of the 
monk's other portraits, all very interesting. Of Alber- 
tinelli I have spoken earlier. Before leaving, look at the 
tiny Ignoto next the door — a Madonna and Child, the 
child eating a pomegranate. It is a little picture to steal. 

In the next room are a number of the later and showy 
painters, such as Carlo Dolci, Lorenzo Lippi, and Francesco 




THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS 

FROM THE. PAINTING BY DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO IN THE ACCADEMIA 



THE "PRIMA VERA" 237 

Furini, all bold, dashing, self-satisfied hands, in whom (so 
near the real thing) one can take no interest. Nothing to 
steal here. 

Returning through Sala Prima we come to the Sala del 
Perugino and are among the masters once more — riper and 
richer than most of those we have already seen, for Tuscan 
art here reaches its finest flower. Perugino is here and 
Botticelli, Fra Bartolommeo and Leonardo, LucaSignorelli, 
Fra Lippo Lippi and Filippino Lippi. And here is a Ma- 
saccio. The great Perugino Assumption has all his mellow 
sunset calm, and never was a landscape more tenderly sym- 
pathetic. The same painter's Deposition hangs next, and the 
custodian brings a magnifying glass that the tears on the 
Magdalen's cheek may be more closely observed ; but the 
third, No. 53, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, is finer, 
and here again the landscape and light are perfect. For 
the rest, there is a Royal Academy Andrea and a formal 
Ghirlandaio. 

And now we come to Botticelli, who although less 
richly represented in numbers than at the Uffizi, is for 
the majority of his admirers more to be sought here, by 
reason of the "Prima vera" allegory, which is the Accade- 
mia's most powerful magnet. The Botticellis are divided 
between two rooms, the "Prima vera" being in the first. 
The first feeling one has is how much cooler it is here than 
among the Peruginos, and how much gayer; for not only 
is there the "Primavera," but Fra Lippo Lippi is here too, 
with a company of angels helping to crown the Virgin, and 
a very sweet, almost transparent, little Madonna adoring 
— No. 79 — which one cannot forget. 

The "Prima vera" is not wearing too well : one sees that 
at once. Being in tempera it cannot be cleaned, and a 
dulness is overlaying it; but nothing can deprive the 



238 THE ACCADEMIA 

figure of Spring of her joy and movement, a floating type 
of conquering beauty and youth. The most wonderful 
thing about this wonderful picture is that it should have 
been painted when it was : that, suddenly, out of a solid 
phalanx of Madonnas should have stepped these radiant 
creatures of the joyous earth, earthy and joyful. And 
not only that they should have so surprisingly and sud- 
denly emerged, but that after all these years this figure 
of Spring should still be the finest of her kind. That is the 
miracle ! Luca Signorelli's flowers at the Uffizi remain 
the best, but Botticelli's are very thoughtful, and before 
the grass turned black they must have been very lovely; 
the exquisite drawing of the irises in the right-hand 
corner can still be traced, although the colour has gone. 
The effect now is rather like a Chinese painting. For the 
history of the "Primavera" and its signification, one must 
turn back to Chapter X. 

I spoke just now of Luca's flowers. There are others in 
his picture in this room — botanist's flowers as distinguished 
from painter's flowers : the wild strawberry beautifully 
straggling. This picture is one of the most remarkable 
in all Florence to me : a Crucifixion to which the perishing 
of the colour has given an effect of extreme delicacy, while 
the group round the cross on the distant mound has a 
quality for which one usually goes to Spanish art. The 
Magdalen is curiously sulky and human. Into the skull 
at the foot of the cross creeps a lizard. 

This room has three Lippo Lippis, which is an interest- 
ing circumstance when we remember that that dissolute 
brother was the greatest influence on Botticelli. The 
largest is the Coronation of the Virgin with its many lilies 
— a picture which one must delight in, so happy and 
crowded is it, but which never seems to me quite what it 



VERROCCHIO AND LEONARDO 239 

should be. The most fascinating part of it is the figures 
in the two little medallions : two perfect pieces of colour 
and design. The kneeling monk on the right is Lippo 
Lippi himself. Near it is the Madonna adoring, No. 
79, of which I have spoken, with herself so luminous and 
the background so dark; the other — No. 82 — is less re- 
markable. No. 81, above it, is by Browning's Pacchiorotto 
(who worked in distemper) ; close by is the Masaccio, 
which has a deep, quiet beauty ; and beneath it is a richly 
coloured predella by Andrea del Sarto, the work of a few 
hours, I should guess, and full of spirit and vigour. It con- 
sists of four scriptural scenes which might be called the direct 
forerunners of Sir John Gilbert and the modern illustrators. 
Lastly we have what is in many ways the most interesting 
picture in Florence — No. 71, the Baptism of Christ — for 
it is held by some authorities to be the only known paint- 
ing by Verrocchio, whose sculptures we saw in the Bargello 
and at Or San Michele, while in one of the angels — that 
surely on the left — we are to see the hand of his pupil 
Leonardo da Vinci. Their faces are singularly sweet. 
Other authorities consider not only that Verrocchio painted 
the whole picture himself but that he painted also the 
Annunciation at the Uffizi to which Leonardo's name is 
given. Be that as it may — and we shall never know — 'this 
is a beautiful thing. According to Vasari it was the 
excellence of Leonardo's contribution which decided Ver- 
rocchio to give up the brush. Among the thoughts of 
Leonardo is one which comes to mind with peculiar force 
before this work when we know its story : " Poor is the 
pupil who does not surpass his master." 

The second Sala di Botticelli has not the value of the 
first. It has magnificent examples of Botticelli's sacred 
work, but the other pictures are not the equal of those in 



240 THE ACCADEMIA 

the other rooms. Chief of the Botticellis is No. 85, 
" The Virgin and Child with divers Saints," in which there 
are certain annoying and restless elements. One feels that 
in the accessories — the flooring, the curtains, and gilt— the 
painter was wasting his time, while the Child is too big. 
Botticelli was seldom too happy with his babies. But the 
face of the Saint in green and blue on the left is most 
exquisitely painted, and the Virgin has rather less troubled 
beauty than usual. The whole effect is not quite spiritual, 
and the symbolism of the nails and the crown of thorns 
held up for the Child to see is rather too cruel and obvious. 
I like better the smaller picture with the same title — No. 
88 — in which the Saints at each side are wholly beautiful 
in Botticelli's wistful way, and the painting of their heads 
and head-dresses is so perfect as to fill one with a kind of 
despair. But taken altogether one must consider Bot- 
ticelli's triumph in the Accademia to be pagan rather than 
sacred. 

No. 8, called officially School of Verrocchio, and by one 
firm of photographers Botticini, and by another Botti- 
celli, is a fine free thing, low in colour, with a quiet land- 
scape, and is altogether a delight. It represents Tobias and 
the three angels, and Raphael moves nobly, although 
not with quite such a step as the radiant figure in a some- 
what similar picture in our own National Gallery — No. 781 
— which, once confidently given to Verrocchio, is now attrib- 
uted to Botticini; while our No. 296, which the visitor 
from Florence on returning to London should hasten to ex- 
amine, is no longer Verrocchio but School of Verrocchio. 
When we think of these attributions and then look at No. 
154 in the Accademia — another Tobias and the Angel, 
here given to Botticini — we have a concrete object lesson in 
the perilous career that awaits the art expert. 



BRONZINO'S TAPESTRIES 241 

The other pictures here are two sunny panels by Ridolfo 
Ghirlandaio, high up, with nice easy colouring ; No. 92, an 
Adoration of the Shepherds by Lorenzo di Credi, with a 
good landscape and all very sweet and quiet; No. 98 a 
Deposition by Filippino Lippi and Perugino, in col- 
laboration, with very few signs of Filippino ; and No. 90 a 
Resurrection by Raffaellino del Garbo, an uncommon 
painter in Florence ; the whole thing a tour de force, but 
not important. 

And now let us look at the Angelicos again. 

Before leaving the Accademia for the last time, one 
should glance at the tapestries near the main entrance, 
just for fun. That one in which Adam names the animals 
is so delightfully naive that it ought to be reproduced as a 
nursery wall-paper. The creatures pass in review in four 
processions, and Adam must have had to be uncommonly 
quick to make up his mind first and then rattle out their 
resultant names in the time. The main procession is that of 
the larger quadrupeds, headed by the unicorn in single glory ; 
and the moment chosen by the artist is that in which the 
elephant, having just heard his name (for the first time) 
and not altogether liking it, is turning towards Adam in 
surprised remonstrance. The second procession is of rep- 
tiles, led by the snail ; the third, the smaller quadrupeds, 
led by four rats, followed desperately close (but of course 
under the white flag) by two cats ; while the fourth — all 
sorts and conditions of birds — streams through the air. 
The others in this series are all delightful, not the least 
being that in which God, having finished His work, takes 
Adam's arm and flies with him over the earth to point out 
its merits. 



CHAPTER XVII 

TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION] 

The Certosa — A Company of Uncles — The Cells — Machia velli — Im- 
pruneta — The della Robbias — Pontassieve — Pelago — Milton's simile — 
Vallombrosa — S. Gualberto — Prato and the Lippis — The Grassina 
Albergo — An American invasion — The Procession of the Dead Christ 

— My loss. 

171 VERY one who merely visits Florence holds it a duty 
-i to bring home at least one flask of the Val d'Ema 
liqueur from the Carthusian monastery four or five miles 
distant from the city, not because that fiery distillation is 
peculiarly attractive but because the vessels which contain 
it are at once pretty decorations and evidences of travel 
and culture. They can be bought in Florence itself, it is 
true (at a shop at the corner of the Via de' Cerretani, close 
to the Baptistery), but the Certosa is far too interesting 
to miss, if one has time to spare from the city's own 
treasures. The trams start from the Mercato Nuovo and 
come along the Via dell' Arcivescovado to the Baptistery, 
and so to the Porta Romana and out into the hilly country. 
The ride is dull and rather tiresome, for there is much 
waiting at sidings, but the expedition becomes attractive 
immediately the tram is left. There is then a short walk, 
principally up the long narrow approach to the monastery 
gates, outside which, when I was there, was sitting a 
beggar at a stone table, waiting for the bowl of soup to 
which all who ask are entitled. 

242 






THE CERTOSA 243 

Passing within the courtyard you ring the bell on the 
right and enter the waiting hall, from which, in the course 
of time, when a sufficient party has been gathered, an elderly 
monk in a white robe leads you away. How many monks 
there may be, I cannot say ; but of the few of whom I caught 
a glimpse, all were alike in the possession of white beards, 
and all suggested uncles in fancy dress. Ours spoke good 
French and was clearly a man of parts. Lulled by his 
soothing descriptions I passed in a kind of dream through 
this ancient abode of peace. 

The Certosa dates from 1341 and was built and endowed 
by a wealthy merchant named Niccolo Acciaioli, after 
whom the Lungarno Acciaioli is named. The members 
of the family are still buried here, certain of the tomb- 
stones bearing dates of the present century. To-day it is 
little but a show place, the cells of the monks being mostly 
empty and the sale of the liqueur its principal reason for 
existence. But the monks who are left take a pride in 
their church, which is attributed to Orcagna, and its pos- 
sessions, among which come first the relief monuments of 
early Acciaioli in the floor of one of the chapels — the 
founder's being perhaps also the work of Orcagna, while 
that of his son Lorenzo, who died in 1353, is attributed 
by our cicerone to Donatello, but by others to an unknown 
hand. It is certainly very beautiful. These tombs are the 
very reverse of those which we saw in S. Croce ; for those 
bear the obliterating traces of centuries of footsteps, so that 
some are nearly flat with the stones, whereas these have 
been railed off for ever and have lost nothing. The other 
famous Certosa tomb is that of Cardinal Angelo Acciaioli, 
which, once given to Donatello, is now sometimes attrib- 
uted to Giuliano di Sangallo and sometimes to his son 
Francesco. 



244 TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION 

The Certosa has a few good pictures, but it is as a 
monastery that it is most interesting : as one of the myriad 
lonely convents of Italy, which one sees so constantly from 
the train, perched among the Apennines, and did not expect 
ever to enter. The cloisters which surround the garden, 
in the centre of which is a well, and beneath which is the 
distillery, are very memorable, not only for their beauty 
but for the sixty and more medallions of saints and evan- 
gelists all round it by Giovanni della Robbia. Here the 
monks have sunned themselves, and here been buried, these 
five and a half centuries. One suite of rooms is shown, with 
its own little private garden and no striking discomfort 
except the hole in the wall by the bed, through which the 
sleeper is' awakened. From its balcony one sees the 
Ema far below and hears the roar of a weir, and aWay in the 
distance is Florence with the Duomo and a third of Giotto's 
Campanile visible above the intervening hills. 

Having shown you all the sights, the monk leads you 
again to the entrance hall and bids you good-bye, with 
murmurs of surprise and a hint of reproach on discovering 
a coin in his hand, for which, however, none the less he 
manages in the recesses of his robe to find a place ; and you 
are then directed to the room where the liqueur, together 
with sweets and picture post-cards, is sold by another 
monk, assisted by a lay attendant, and the visit to the 
Certosa is over. 

The tram that passes the Certosa continues to S. Cas- 
ciano in the Chianti district (but much wine is called 
Chianti that never came from here), where there is a point 
of interest in the house to which Machiavelli retired in 
1512, to give himself to literature and to live that wonder- 
ful double life — a peasant loafer by day in the fields and 
the village inn, and at night, dressed in his noblest clothes, 



IMPRUNETA 245 

the cold, sagacious mentor of the rulers of mankind. But 
at S. Casciano I did not stop. 

And farther still one comes to the village of Impruneta, 
after climbing higher and higher, with lovely calm valleys 
on either side coloured by silver olive groves and vivid 
wheat and maize, and studded with white villas and vil- 
lages and church towers. On the road every woman in 
every doorway plaits straw with rapid fingers just as if we 
were in Bedfordshire. Impruneta is famous for its new 
terra-cotta vessels and its ancient della Robbias. For in 
the church is some of Luca's most exquisite work — an altar- 
piece with a frieze of aerial angels under it, and a stately 
white saint on either side, and the loveliest decorated 
columns imaginable; while in an adjoining chapel is a 
Christ crucified, mourned by the most dignified and melan- 
choly of Magdalens. Andrea della Robbia is here too, 
and here also is a richly designed cantoria by Mino da 
Fiesole. The village is not in the regular programme of 
visitors, and Baedeker ignores it ; hence perhaps the ex- 
citement which an arrival from Florence causes, for the 
children turn out in battalions. The church is very dirty, 
and so indeed is everything else ; but no amount of grime 
can disguise the charm of the cloisters. 

The Certosa is a mere half-hour from Florence, Impru- 
neta an hour and a half ; but Vallombrosa asks a long day. 
One can go by rail, changing at Sant' Ellero into the 
expensive rack-and-pinion car which climbs through the 
vineyards to a point near the summit, and has, since it was 
opened, brought to the mountain so many new residents, 
whose little villas cling to the western slopes among the 
lizards, and, in summer, are smitten unbearably by the sun. 
But the best way to visit the monastery and the groves is 
by road. A motor-car no doubt makes little of the jour- 



246 TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION 

ney; but a carriage and pair such as I chartered at 
Florence for forty-five lire has to be away before seven, 
and, allowing three hours on the top, is not back again 
until the same hour in the evening ; and this, the ancient 
way, with the beat of eight hoofs in one's ears, is the right 
way. 

For several miles the road and the river — the Arno — run 
side by side — and the railway close by too — through vener- 
able villages whose inhabitants derive their living either 
from the soil or the water, and amid vineyards all the time. 
Here and there a white villa is seen, but for the most part 
this is peasants' district : one such villa on the left, before 
Pontassieve, having about it, and on each side of its drive, 
such cypresses as one seldom sees and only Gozzoli or Mr. 
Sargent could rightly paint, each in his own style. Not far 
beyond, in a scrap of meadow by the road, sat a girl knitting 
in the morning sun — with a placid glance at us as we rat- 
tled by ; and ten hours later, when we rattled past again, 
there she still was, still knitting, in the evening sun, and 
again her quiet eyes were just raised and dropped. 

At Pontassieve we stopped awhile for coffee at an inn 
at the corner of the square of pollarded limes, and while it 
was preparing watched the little crumbling town at work, 
particularly the cooper opposite, who was finishing a mas- 
sive cask within whose recesses good Chianti is doubtless 
now maturing ; and then on the white road again, to the 
turning, a mile farther on, to the left, where one bids the 
Arno farewell till the late afternoon. Steady climbing 
now, and then a turn to the right and we see Pelago before 
us, perched on its crags, and by and by come to it — a tiny 
town, with a clean and alluring inn, very different from 
the squalor of Pontassieve : famous in art and particularly 
Florentine art as being the birthplace of Lorenzo Ghiberti, 



MILTON'S SIMILE 247 

who made the Baptistery doors. From Pelago the road 
descends with extreme steepness to a brook in a rocky 
valley, at a bridge over which the real climb begins, to go 
steadily on (save for another swift drop before Tosi) until 
Vallombrosa is reached, winding through woods all the way, 
chiefly chestnut — those woods which gave Milton, who was 
here in 1638, his famous simile. 1 The heat was now becom- 
ing intense (it was mid-September) and the horses were 
suffering, and most of this last stage was done at walking 
pace; but such was the exhilaration of the air, such the 
delight of the aromas which the breeze continually wafted 
from the woods, now sweet, now pungent, and always 
refreshing, that one felt no fatigue even though walk- 
ing too. And so at last the monastery, and what was 
at that moment better than anything, lunch. 

The beauty and joy of Vallombrosa, I may say at once, 
are Nature's, not man's. The monastery, which is now a 
Government school of forestry, is ugly and unkempt ; the 
hotel is unattractive; the few people one meets want to 
sell something or take you for a drive. But in an instant 
in any direction one can be in the woods — and at this level 
they are pine woods, soft underfoot and richly perfumed — 
and a quarter of an hour's walking brings the view. It is 
then that you realize you are on a mountain indeed. 

1 "Thick as leaves in Vallombrosa" has come to be the form of words 
as most people quote them. But Milton wrote ("Paradise Lost," Book I, 
300-304) : — 

"He called 
His legions, angel-forms, who lay entranced 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
In Vallombrosa where the Etrurian shades, 
High over-arched, embower." 

Wordsworth, by the way, when he visited Vallombrosa with Crabb 
Robinson in 1837, wrote an inferior poem there, in a rather common 
metre, in honour of Milton's association with it. 



248 TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION 

Florence is to the north-west in the long Arno valley, 
which is here precipitous and narrow. The river is far 
below — if you slipped you would slide into it — fed by 
tumbling Apennine streams from both walls. The top of 
the mountain is heathery like Scotland, and open ; but not 
long will it be so, for everywhere are the fenced parallelo- 
grams which indicate that a villa is to be erected. Nothing, 
however, can change the mountain air or the glory of the 
surrounding heights. 

Another view, unbroken by villas but including the 
monastery and the Foresters' Hotel in the immediate fore- 
ground, and extending as far as Florence itself (on suitable 
days), is obtained from II Paradisino, a white building on 
a ledge which one sees from the hotel above the monastery. 
But that is not by any means the top. The view covers 
much of the way by which we came hither. 

Of the monastery of Vallombrosa we have had f oreshadow- 
ings in Florence. We saw at the Accademia two exquisite 
portraits by Fra Bartolommeo of Vallombrosan monks. 
We saw at the Bargello the remains of a wonderful frieze 
by Benedetto da Rovezzano for the tomb of the founder of 
the order, S. Giovanni Gualberto ; we shall see at S. Mini- 
ato scenes in the saint's life on the site of the ancient chapel 
where the crucifix bent and blessed him. As the head of 
the monastery Gualberto was famous for the severity and 
thoroughness of his discipline. But though a martinet as 
an abbot, personally he was humble and mild. His advice 
on all kinds of matters is said to have been invited even by 
kings and popes. He invented the system of lay brothers 
to help with the domestic work of the convent ; and after 
a life of holiness, which comprised several miracles, he died 
in 1073 and was subsequently canonized. 

The monastery, as I have said, is now secularized, save 



MILTON AMENDED 249 

for the chapel, where three resident monks perform service. 
One may wander through its rooms and see in the refectory, 
beneath portraits of famous brothers, the tables now laid 
for young foresters. The museum of forestry is interesting 
to those interested in museums of forestry. 

It was to the monastery at Vallombrosa that the Brown- 
ings travelled in 1848 when Mrs. Browning was ill. But 
the abbot could not break the rules in regard to women, 
and after five days they had to return to Florence. Brown- 
ing used to play the organ in the chapel as, it is said, Milton 
had done two centuries earlier. 

At such a height and with only a short season the hotel 
proprietors must do what they can, and prices do not rule 
low. A departing American was eyeing his bill with a 
rueful glance as we were leaving. "Milton had it wrong," 
he said to me (with the freemasonry of the plucked, for I 
knew him not), "what he meant was, 'thick as thieves.' " 

We returned by way of Sant' Ellero, the gallant horses 
trotting steadily down the hill, and then beside the Arno 
once more all the way to Florence. It chanced to be a 
great day in the city — September 20th, the anniversary of 
the final defeat of papal temporal power, in 1870 — which 
we were not sorry to have missed, the first tidings coming 
to us from the beautiful tower of the Palazzo Vecchio which 
in honour of the occasion had been picked out with fairy 
lamps. 

Among the excursions which I think ought to be made 
if one is in Florence for a justifying length of time is a 
visit to Prato. This ancient town one should see for 
several things : for its age and for its walls ; for its great 
piazza (with a pile of vividly dyed yarn in the midst) sur- 
rounded by arches under which coppersmiths hammer all 
day at shining rotund vessels, while their wives plait 



250 TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION 

straw; for Filippino Lippi's exquisite Madonna in a 
little mural shrine at the narrow end of the piazza, which 
a woman (fetched by a crowd of ragged boys) will unlock 
for threepence; and for the cathedral, with Filippino's 
dissolute father's frescoes in it, the Salome being one of 
the most interesting pre-Botticelli scenes in Italian art. If 
only it had its colour what a wonder of lightness and 
beauty this still would be ! But probably most people are 
attracted to Prato chiefly by Donatello and Michelozzo's 
outdoor pulpit, the frieze of which is a kind of prentice 
work for the famous cantoria in the museum of the cathedral 
at Florence, with just such wanton boys dancing round it. 
On Good Friday evening in the lovely dying April light 
I paid thirty centimes to be taken by tram to Grassina 
to see the famous procession of the Gesu Morto. The 
number of people on the same errand having thrown out 
the tram service, we had very long waits, while the road was 
thronged with other vehicles; and the result was I was 
tired enough — having been standing all the way — when 
Grassina was reached, for festivals six miles out of Florence 
at seven in the evening disarrange good habits. But a few 
pence spent in the albergo on bread and cheese and wine 
soon restored me. A queer cavern of a place, this inn, 
with rough tables, rows and rows of wine flasks, and an 
open fire behind the bar, tended by an old woman, from 
which everything good to eat proceeded rapidly without 
dismay — roast chicken and fish in particular. A strapping 
girl with high cheek bones and a broad, dark, comely face 
washed plates and glasses assiduously, and two waiters, with 
eyes as near together as monkeys', served the customers 
with bewildering intelligence. It was the sort of inn that 
in England would throw up its hands if you asked even 
for cold beef. 



GRASSINA 251 

The piazza of Grassina, which, although merely a village, 
is enterprising enough to have a cinematoscope hall, was 
full of stalls given chiefly to the preparation and sale of 
cake like the Dutch wafelen, and among the stalls were 
conjurors, cheap-jacks, singers, and dice throwers ; while 
every moment brought its fresh motor-car or carriage load, 
nearly all speaking English with a nasal twang. Mean- 
while everyone shouted, the naphtha flared, the drums 
beat, the horses champed. The street was full too, chiefly 
of peasants, but among them myriad resolute American 
virgins, in motor veils, whom nothing can ever surprise; 
a few American men, sceptical, as ever, of anything ever 
happening; here and there a diffident Englishwoman and 
Englishman, more in the background, but destined in the 
end to see all. But what I chiefly noticed was the native 
girls, with their proud bosoms carried high and nothing 
on their heads. They at any rate know their own future. 
No rushing over the globe for them, but the simple natural 
home life and children. 

In the gloom the younger girls in white muslin were 
like pretty ghosts, each followed by a solicitous mother 
giving a touch here and a touch there — mothers who once 
wore muslin too, will wear it no more, and are now happy 
in pride in their daughters. And very little girls too — 
mere tots — wearing wings, who very soon were to join the 
procession as angels. 

And all the while the darkness was growing, and on the 
hill where the church stands lights were beginning to move 
about, in that mysterious way which torches have when a 
procession is being mobilized, while all the villas on the 
hills around had their rows of candles. 

And then the shifting flames came gradually into a mass 
and took a steady upward progress, and the melancholy 



252 TWO MONASTERIES AND A PROCESSION 

strains of an ancient ecclesiastical lamentation reached our 
listening ears. As the lights drew nearer I left the bank 
where all the Mamies and Sadies with their Mommas were 
stationed and walked down into the river valley to meet 
the vanguard. On the bridge I found a little band of 
Roman soldiers on horseback, without stirrups, and had a 
few words with one of them as to his anachronistic ciga- 
rette, and then the first torches arrived, carried by proud 
little boys in red ; and after the torches the little girls in 
muslin veils, which were, however, for the most part dis- 
arranged for the better recognition of relations and even 
more perhaps for recognition by relations : and very pretty 
this recognition was on both sides. And then the village 
priests in full canonicals, looking a little self-conscious; 
and after them the dead Christ on a litter carried by a 
dozen contadini, who had a good deal to say to each other 
as they bore Him. 

This was the same dead Christ which had been lying in 
state in the church, for the past few days, to be worshipped 
and kissed by the peasantry. I had seen a similar image 
at Settignano the day before and had watched how the 
men took it. They began by standing in groups in the 
piazza, gossipping. Then two or three would break away 
and make for the church. There, all among the women 
and children, half-shyly, half-defiantly, they pecked at the 
plaster flesh and returned to resume the conversation in the 
piazza with a new serenity and confidence in their hearts. 

After the dead Christ came a triumphal car of the very 
little girls with wings, signifying I know not what, but 
intensely satisfying to the onlookers. One little wet-nosed 
cherub I patted, so chubby and innocent she was; and 
Heaven send that the impulse profited me ! This car was 
drawn by an ancient white horse, amiable and tractable as a 



AN IRONICAL FINISH 253 

saint, but as bewildered as I as to the meaning of the whole 
strange business. After the car of angels a stalwart body 
of white-vestmented singers, sturdy fellows with black 
moustaches who had been all day among the vines, or 
steering placid white oxen through the furrows, and were 
now lifting their voices in a miserere. And after them 
the painted plaster Virgin, carried as upright as possible, 
and then more torches and the wailing band; and after 
the band another guard of Roman soldiers. 

Such was the Grassina procession. It passed slowly and 
solemnly through the town from the hill and up the hill 
again ; and not soon shall I forget the mournf ulness of the 
music, which nothing of tawdriness in the constituents 
of the procession itself could rid of impressiveness and 
beauty. One thing is certain — all processions, by day or 
night, should first descend a hill and then ascend one. All 
should walk to melancholy strains. Indeed, a joyful pro- 
cession becomes an impossible thought after this. 

And then I sank luxuriously into a corner seat in the 
waiting tram, and, seeking for the return journey's thirty 
centimes, found that during the proceedings my purse had 
been stolen. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

S. MARCO 

Andrea del Castagno — "The Last Supper" — The stolen Madonna — 
Fra Angelico's frescoes — " Little Antony " — The good archbishop — The 
Buonuomini — Savonarola — The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent — Pope 
Alexander VI — The Ordeal by Fire — The execution — TheS. Marco cells 
— The cloister frescoes — Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper" — Relics of old 
Florence — Pico and Politian — Piero di Cosimo — Andrea del Sarto. 

FROM the Accademia it is but a step to S. Marco, across 
the Piazza, but it is well first to go a little beyond 
that in order to see a certain painting which both chrono- 
logically and as an influence comes before a painting that 
we shall find in the Museo S. Marco. We therefore cross 
the Piazza S. Marco to the Via d' Arrazzieri, which leads 
into the Via 27 Aprile, 1 where at a door on the left, marked 
A, is an ancient refectory, preserved as a picture gallery : 
the Cenacolo di S. Apollonia, all that is kept sacred of 
the monastery of S. Apollonia, now a military establish- 
ment. This room is important to students of art in con- 
taining so much work of Andrea del Castagno (1390-1457), 
to whom Vasari gives so black a character. The portrait 
frescoes are from the Villa Pandolfini (previously Carducci), 
and among them are Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante — who 
is here rather less ascetic than usual — none of whom the 
painter could have seen. There is also a very charming 

1 27 April, 1859, the day that the war with Austria was proclaimed. 

254 



JUDAS IN PAINT 255 

little cupid carrying a huge peacock plume. But " The Last 
Supper" is the glory of the room. This work, which be- 
longs to the middle of the fifteenth century, is interesting as 
a real effort at psychology. Leonardo makes Judas leave 
his seat to ask if it is he that is meant — that being the 
dramatic moment chosen by this prince of painters : 
Castagno calls attention to Judas as an undesirable member 
of the little band of disciples by placing him apart, the 
only one on his side of the table ; which was avoiding the 
real task, since naturally when one of the company was 
forced into so sinister a position the question would be 
already answered. Castagno indeed renders Judas so 
obviously untrustworthy as to make it a surprise that he 
ever was admitted among the disciples (or wished to be one) 
at all ; while Vasari blandly suggests that he is the very 
image of the painter himself. Other positions which later 
artists converted into a convention may also be noted : 
John, for example, is reclining on the table in an ecstasy of 
affection and fidelity; while the Florentine loggia as the 
scene of the meal was often reproduced later. 

Andrea del Castagno began life as a farm lad, but was 
educated as an artist at the cost of one of the less notable 
Medici. He had a vigorous way with his brush, as we see 
here and have seen elsewhere. In the Duomo, for example, 
we saw his equestrian portrait of Niccolo da Tolentino, a 
companion to Uccello's Hawkwood. When the Albizzi 
and Peruzzi intrigues which had led to the banishment of 
Cosimo de' Medici came to their final frustration with the 
triumphant return of Cosimo, it was Andrea who was com- 
missioned by the Signoria to paint for the outside of the 
Bargello a picture of the leaders of the insurrection, upside 
down. Vasari is less to be trusted in his dates and facts 
in his memoir of Andrea del Castagno than anywhere else ; 



256 S. MARCO 

for he states that he commemorated the failure of the 
Pazzi Conspiracy (which occurred twenty years after his 
death), and accuses him not only of murdering his fellow- 
painter Domenico Veneziano but confessing to the crime ; 
the best answer to which allegation is that Domenico 
survived Andrea by four years. 

We may now return to S. Marco. The convent as we 
now see it was built by Michelozzo, Donatello's friend and 
partner and the friend also of Cosimo de' Medici, at whose 
cost he worked here. Antonino, the saintly head of the 
monastery, having suggested to Cosimo that he should 
apply some of his wealth, not always too nicely obtained, 
to the Lord, Cosimo began literally to squander money on 
S. Marco, dividing his affection between S. Lorenzo, which 
he completed upon the lines laid down by his father, and 
this Dominican monastery, where he even had a cell 
reserved for his own use, with a bedroom in addition, 
whither he might now and again retire for spiritual 
refreshment and quiet. 

It was at S. Marco that Cosimo kept the MSS. which 
he was constantly collecting, and which now, after curious 
vicissitudes, are lodged in Michelangelo's library at S. 
Lorenzo ; and on his death he left them to the monks. 
Cosimo's librarian was Tommaso Parenticelli, a little busy 
man, who, to the general astonishment, on the death of 
Eugenius IV became Pope and took the name of Nicholas 
V. His energies as Pontiff went rather towards learning 
and art than anything else : he laid the foundations of the 
Vatican library, on the model of Cosimo's, and persuaded 
Fra Angelico to Rome to paint Vatican frescoes. 

The magnets which draw every one who visits Florence 
to S. Marco are first Fra Angelico, and secondly Savonarola, 
or first Savonarola, and secondly Fra Angelico, according 




THE VISION OF S. BERNARD 

FROM THE PAINTING BY FRA BARTOLOIIMEO IN THE ACCADEAIIA 



THE STOLEN ANGELICO 257 

as one is constituted. Fra Angelico, at Cosimo's desire 
and cost, came from Fiesole to paint here ; while Girolamo 
Savonarola, forced to leave Ferrara during the war, entered 
these walls in 1482. Fra Angelico in his single crucifixion 
picture in the first cloisters and in his great scene of the 
Mount of Olives in the chapter house shows himself less 
incapable of depicting unhappiness than we have yet seen 
him ; but the most memorable of the ground-floor frescoes 
is the symbol of hospitality over the door of the wayfarers' 
room, where Christ is being welcomed by two Dominicans 
in the way that Dominicans (as contrasted with scoundrelly 
Franciscans) would of course welcome Him. In this 
Ospizio are three reliquaries which Fra Angelico painted 
for S. Maria Novella, now preserved here in a glass case. 
They represent the Madonna della Stella, the Corona- 
tion of the Virgin, and the Adoration of the Magi. 
All are in Angelico 's happiest manner, with plenty of 
gold; and the predella of the Coronation is the prettiest 
thing possible, with its blue saints gathered about a blue 
Mary and Joseph, who bend over the Baby. 

The Madonna della Stella is the picture which was stolen 
in 1911, but quickly recovered. It is part of the strange com- 
plexity of this world that it should equally contain artists 
such as Fra Angelico and thieves such as those who planned 
and carried out this robbery : nominally custodians of the 
museum. To repeat one of Vasari's sentences : " Some 
say that he never took up his brush without first making 
a prayer." . . . 

The " Peter " with his finger to his lips, over the sacristy, 
is reminding the monks that that room is vowed to 
silence. In the chapter house is the large Crucifixion by 
the same gentle hand, his greatest work in Florence, and 
very fine and true in character. Beneath it are portraits of 



258 S. MARCO 

seventeen famous Dominicans with S. Dominic in the 
midst. Note the girl with the scroll in the right — how 
gay and light the colouring. Upstairs, in the cells, and 
pre-eminently in the passage, where his best known An- 
nunciation is to be seen, Angelico is at his best. In each cell 
is a little fresco reminding the brother of the life of 
Christ — and of those by Angelico it may be said that 
each is as simple as it can be and as sweet : easy lines, 
easy colours, with the very spirit of holiness shining out. 
I think perhaps that the Coronation of the Virgin in the 
ninth cell, reproduced in this volume, is my favourite, 
as it is of many persons; but the Annunciation in the 
third, the two Maries at the Sepulchre in the eighth, and 
the Child in the Stable in the fifth, are ever memorable 
too. In the cell set apart for Cosimo de' Medici, No. 38, 
which the officials point out, is an Adoration of the Magi, 
painted there at Cosimo's express wish, that he might be 
reminded of the humility proper to rulers; and here we 
get one of the infrequent glimpses of this best and wisest 
of the Medici, for a portrait of him adorns it, with a 
wrong death-date on it. 

Here also is a sensitive terra-cotta bust of S. Antonio, 
Cosimo's friend and another pride of the monastery : the 
monk who was also Archbishop of Florence until his 
death, and whom we saw, in stone, in a niche under the 
Uffizi. His cell was the thirty-first cell, opposite the en- 
trance. This benign old man, who has one of the kindest 
faces of his time, which was often introduced into pictures, 
was appointed to the see at the suggestion of Fra Angelico, 
to whom Pope Eugenius (who consecrated the new S. 
Marco in 1442 and occupied Cosimo de* Medici's cell on 
his visit) had offered it ; but the painter declined and put 
forward Antonio in his stead. Antonio Pierozzi, whose 



LITTLE ANTONY 259 

destiny it was to occupy this high post, to be a confidant 
of Cosimo de' Medici, and ultimately, in 1523, to be enrolled 
among the saints, was born at Florence in 1389. Accord- 
ing to Butler, from the cradle "Antonino" or "Little 
Antony," as the Florentines affectionately called him, had 
" no inclination but to piety," and was an enemy even as an 
infant " both to sloth and to the amusements of children." 
As a schoolboy his only pleasure was to read the lives of 
the saints, converse with pious persons or to pray. When 
not at home or at school he was in church, either kneeling 
or lying prostrate before a crucifix, " with a perseverance 
that astonished everybody." S. Dominic himself, preach- 
ing at Fiesole, made him a Dominican, his answers to an 
examination of the whole decree of Gratian being the de- 
ciding cause, although Little Antony was then but sixteen. 
As a priest he was " never seen at the altar but bathed in 
tears." After being prior of a number of convents and a 
counsellor of much weight in convocation, he was made 
Archbishop of Florence : but was so anxious to avoid the 
honour and responsibility that he hid in the island of Sar- 
dinia. On being discovered he wrote a letter praying to 
be excused and watered it with his tears; but at last he 
consented and was consecrated in 1446. 

As archbishop his life was a model of simplicity and 
solicitude. He thought only of his duties and the well- 
being of the poor. His purse was open to all in need, and 
he " often sold " his single mule in order to relieve some 
necessitous person. He gave up his garden to the growth 
of vegetables for the poor, and kept an ungrateful leper 
whose sores he dressed with his own hands. He died in 
1459 and was canonized in 1523. His body was still free 
from corruption in 1559, when it was translated to the 
chapel in S. Marco prepared for it by the Salviati. 



260 S. MARCO 

But perhaps the good Antonino's finest work was the 
foundation of a philanthropic society of Florentines which 
still carries on its good work. Antonino's sympathy lay 
in particular with the reduced families of Florence, and it 
was to bring help secretly to them — too proud to beg — 
that he called for volunteers. The society was known in 
the city as the Buonuomini (good men) of S. Martino, the 
little church close to Dante's house, behind the Badia : 
S. Martin being famous among saints for his impulsive yet 
wise generosity with his cloak. 

The other and most famous prior of S. Marco was 
Savonarola. Girolamo Savonarola was born of noble family 
at Ferrara in 1452, and after a profound education, in 
which he concentrated chiefly upon religion and philosophy, 
he entered the Dominican order at the age of twenty-two. 
He first came to S. Marco at the age of thirty and preached 
there in Lent in 1482, but without attracting much notice. 
When, however, he returned to S. Marco seven years later 
it was to be instantly hailed both as a powerful preacher 
and reformer. His eloquent and burning declarations 
were hurled both at Florence and Rome : at the apathy 
and greed of the Church as a whole, and at the sinfulness 
and luxury of this city, while Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
who was then at the height of his influence, surrounded 
by accomplished and witty hedonists, and happiest when 
adding to his collection of pictures, jewels, and sculpture, 
in particular did the priest rebuke. Savonarola stood for 
the spiritual ideals and asceticism of the Baptist, Christ, 
and S. Paul ; Lorenzo, in his eyes, made only for sensuality 
and decadence. 

The two men, however, recognized each other's genius, 
and Lorenzo, with the tolerance which was as much a mark 
of the first three Medici rulers as its absence was notable 



THE MAGNIFICENT'S DEATH 261 

in most of the later ones, rather encouraged Savonarola in 
his crusade than not. He visited him in the monastery 
and did not resent being kept waiting; and he went to 
hear him preach. In 1492 Lorenzo died, sending for 
Savonarola on his death-bed, which was watched by the 
two closest of his scholarly friends, Pico della Mirandola 
and Politian. The story of what happened has been vari- 
ously told. According to the account of Politian, Lorenzo 
met his end with fortitude, and Savonarola prayed with 
the dying man and gave him his blessing; according to 
another account, Lorenzo was called upon by Savonarola 
to make three undertakings before he died, and, Lorenzo 
declining, Savonarola left him unabsolved. These promises 
were (1) to repent of all his sins, and in particular of the 
sack of Volterra, of the alleged theft of public dowry funds 
and of the implacable punishment of the Pazzi conspirators ; 
(2) to restore all property of which he had become possessed 
by unjust means ; and (3) to give back to Florence her lib- 
erty. But the probabilities are in favor of Politian's account 
being the true one, and the later story a political invention. 
Lorenzo dead and Piero his son so incapable, Savonarola 
came to his own. He had long foreseen a revolution 
following on the death of Lorenzo, and in one of his most 
powerful sermons he had suggested that the "Flagellum 
Dei " to punish the wicked Florentines might be a for- 
eign invader. When therefore in 1493 the French king 
Charles VIII arrived in Italy with his army, Savonarola was 
recognized not only as a teacher but as a prophet; and 
when the Medici had been again banished and Charles, 
having asked too much, had retreated from Florence, the 
Republic was remodelled with Savonarola virtually con- 
trolling its Great Council. For a year or two his power 
was supreme. 



262 S. MARCO 

This was the period of the Piagnoni, or Weepers. The 
citizens adopted sober attire ; a spirit as of England under 
the Puritans prevailed; and Savonarola's eloquence so 
far carried away not only the populace but many persons 
of genius that a bonfire was lighted in the middle of the 
Piazza della Signoria in which costly dresses, jewels, false 
hair, and studies from the nude were destroyed. 

Savonarola, meanwhile, was not only chastising and re- 
forming Florence, but with fatal audacity was attacking 
with even less mincing of words the licentiousness of the 
Pope. As to the character of Lorenzo de' Medici there 
can be two opinions, and indeed the historians of Florence 
are widely divided in their estimates; but of Roderigo 
Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) there is but one, and Savona- 
rola held it. Savonarola was excommunicated, but refused 
to obey the edict. Popes, however, although Florence had 
to a large extent put itself out of reach, have long arms, 
and gradually — taking advantage of the city's growing dis- 
content with piety and tears and recurring unquiet, there 
being still a strong pro-Medici party, and building not a 
little on his knowledge of the Florentine love of change — 
the Pope gathered together sufficient supporters of his 
determination to crush this too outspoken critic and hu- 
miliate his fellow-citizens. 

Events helped the pontiff. A pro-Medici conspiracy 
excited the populace; a second bonfire of vanities led to 
rioting, for the Florentines were beginning to tire of virtue ; 
and the preaching of a Franciscan monk against Savona- 
rola (and the gentle Fra Angelico has shown us, in the 
Accademia, how Franciscans and Dominicans could hate 
each other) brought matters to a head, for he challenged 
Savonarola to an ordeal by fire in the Loggia de' Lanzi, to 
test which of them spoke with the real voice of God. A 



SAVONAROLA'S FALL 263 

Dominican volunteered to make the essay with a Franciscan. 
This ceremony, anticipated with the liveliest eagerness by 
the Florentines, was at the last moment forbidden, and 
Savonarola, who had to bear the responsibility of such a 
bitter disappointment to a pleasure-loving people, became an 
unpopular figure. Everything just then was against him, 
for Charles VIII, with whom he had an understanding and 
of whom the Pope was afraid, chose that moment to die. 

The Pope drove home his advantage, and getting more 
power among individuals on the Council forced them to 
indict their firebrand. No means were spared, however 
base ; forgery and false witness were as nothing. The sum- 
mons arrived on April 8th, 1497, when Savonarola was at 
S. Marco. The monks, who adored him, refused to let him 
go, and for a whole day the convent was under siege. But 
might, of course, prevailed, and Savonarola was dragged 
from the church to the Palazzo Vecchio and prosecuted for 
the offence of claiming to have supernatural power and 
fomenting political disturbance. He was imprisoned in a 
tiny cell in the tower for many days, and under constant 
torture he no doubt uttered words which would never have 
passed his lips had he been in control of himself ; but we 
may dismiss, as false, the evidence which makes them into 
confessions. Evidence there had to be, and evidence natu- 
rally was forthcoming ; and sentence of death was passed. 

In that cell, when not under torture, he managed to 
write meditations on the thirteenth psalm, " In Thee, O 
Lord, have I hoped," and a little work entitled " A Rule 
for Living a Christian Life." Before the last day he ad- 
ministered the Sacrament to his two companions, who were 
to die with him, with perfect composure, and the night 
preceding they spent together in prayer in the Great Hall 
which he had once dominated. 



264 S. MARCO 

The execution was on May 23rd, 1498. A gallows was 
erected in the Piazza della Signoria on the spot now marked 
by the bronze tablet. Beneath the gallows was a bonfire. 
All those members of the Government who could endure 
the scene were present, either on the platform of the 
Palazzo Vecchio or in the Loggia de' Lanzi. The crowd 
filled the Piazza. The three monks went to their death 
unafraid. When his friar's gown was taken from him, 
Savonarola said : " Holy gown, thou wert granted to me by 
God's grace and I have ever kept thee unstained. Now I 
forsake thee not but am bereft of thee." (This very gar- 
ment is in the glass case in Savonarola's cell at S. Marco.) 
The Bishop replied hastily : " I separate thee from the 
Church militant and triumphant." " Militant," replied 
Savonarola : " not triumphant, for that rests not with 
you." The monks were first hanged and then burned. 

The larger picture of the execution which hangs in 
Savonarola's cell, although interesting and up to a point 
credible, is of course not right. The square must have 
been crowded : in fact we know it was. The picture 
has still other claims on the attention, for it shows 
the Judith and Holofernes as the only statue before the 
Palazzo Vecchio, standing where David now is ; it shows the 
old ringhiera, the Marzocco (very inaccurately drawn), 
and the Loggia de' Lanzi empty of statuary. We have in 
the National Gallery a little portrait of Savonarola — No. 
1301 — with another representation of the execution on the 
back of it. 

So far as I can understand Savonarola, his failure was 
due to two causes : firstly, his fatal blending of religion and 
politics, and secondly, the conviction which his tempo- 
rary success with the susceptible Florentines bred in his 
heated mind that he was destined to carry all before him, 




VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED, WITH SAINTS 

FROM THE PAINTING BY BOTTICELLI IN THE ACCADE1UA 



THE GREAT ASCETIC 265 

totally failing to appreciate the Florentine character with 
all its swift and deadly changes and love of change. As I 
see it, Savonarola's special mission at that time was to be a 
wandering preacher, spreading the light and exciting his 
listeners to spiritual revival in this city and that, but never 
to be in a position of political power and never to become 
rooted. The peculiar tragedy of his career is that he left 
Florence no better than he found it : indeed, very likely 
worse; for in a reaction from a spiritual revival a lower 
depth can be reached than if there had been no revival at 
all ; while the visit of the French army to Italy, for which 
Savonarola took such credit to himself, merely ended in 
disaster for Italy, disease for Europe, and the spreading of 
the very Renaissance spirit which he had toiled to destroy. 
But when all is said as to his tragedy, personal and 
political, there remains this magnificent isolated figure, 
single-minded, austere and self-sacrificing, in an age of 
indulgence. 

For most people "Romola" is the medium through which 
Savonarola is visualized; but there he is probably made 
too theatrical. Yet he must have had something of the 
theatre in him even to consent to the ordeal by fire. That 
he was an intense visionary is beyond doubt, but a very 
real man too we must believe when we read of the devotion 
of his monks to his person, and of his success for a while 
with the shrewd, worldly Great Council. 

Savonarola had many staunch friends among the artists. 
We have seen Lorenzo di Credi and Fra Bartolommeo 
under his influence. After his death Fra Bartolommeo 
entered S. Marco (his cell was No. 34), and di Credi, who 
was noted for his clean living, entered S. Maria Nuova. 
Two of Luca della Robbia's nephews were also monks 
under Savonarola. We have seen Fra Bartolommeo's 



266 S. MARCO 

portrait of Savonarola in the Accademia, and there is 
another of him here. Cronaca, who built the Great 
Council's hall, survived Savonarola only ten years, and 
during that time all his stories were of him. Michelangelo, 
who was a young man when he heard him preach, read his 
sermons to the end of his long life. But upon Botticelli 
his influence was most powerful, for he turned that master's 
hand from such pagan allegories as the "Prima vera" and 
the "Birth of Venus" wholly to religious subjects. 

Savonarola had three adjoining cells. In the first is a 
monument to him, his portrait by Fra Bartolommeo and 
three frescoes by the same hand. In the next room is the 
glass case containing his robe, his hair shirt, and rosary; 
and here also are his desk and some books. In the bedroom 
is a crucifixion by Fra Angelico on linen. No one know- 
ing Savonarola's story can remain here unmoved. 

We find Fra Bartolommeo again with a pencil drawing 
of S. Antonio in that saint's cell. Here also is Antonino's 
death-mask. The terra-cotta bust of him in Cosimo's cell 
is the most like life, but there is an excellent and viva- 
cious bronze in the right transept of S. Maria Novella. 

Before passing downstairs again the library should be 
visited, that delightful assemblage of grey pillars and arches. 
Without its desks and cases it would be one of the most 
beautiful rooms in Florence. All the books have gone, 
save the illuminated music. 

In the first cloisters, which are more liveable-in than the 
ordinary Florentine cloisters, having a great shady tree 
in the midst with a seat round it, and flowers, are the Fra 
Angelicos I have mentioned. The other painting is rather 
theatrical and poor. In the refectory is a large scene of 
the miracle of the Providenza, when S. Dominic and his 
companions, during a famine, were fed by two angels with 



ANCIENT FLORENCE 267 

bread ; while at the back S. Antonio watches the crucified 
Christ. The artist is Sogliano. 

In addition to Fra Angelico's great crucifixion fresco 
in the chapter house, is a single Christ crucified, with a 
monk mourning, by Antonio Pollaiuolo, very like the Fra 
Angelico in the cloisters ; but the colour has left it, and 
what must have been some noble cypresses are now ghosts 
dimly visible. The frame is superb. 

One other painting we must see — the "Last Supper" of 
Domenico Ghirlandaio. Florence has two "Last Suppers " 
by this artist — one at the Ognissanti and this. The two 
works are very similar and have much entertaining interest, 
but the debt which this owes to Castagno is very obvious : it 
is indeed Castagno sweetened. Although psychologically 
this picture is weak, or at any rate not strong, it is full of 
pleasant touches : the supper really is a supper, as it too 
often is not, with fruit and dishes and a generous number 
of flasks; the tablecloth would delight a good' house- 
keeper ; a cat sits close to Judas, his only companion ; a 
peacock perches in a niche ; there are flowers on the wall, 
and at the back of the charming loggia where the feast is 
held are luxuriant trees, and fruits, and flying birds. The 
monks at food in this small refectory had compensation 
for their silence in so engaging a scene. This room also 
contains a beautiful della Robbia " Deposition." 

The little refectory, which is at the foot of the stairs 
leading to the cells, opens on the second cloisters, and these 
few visitors ever enter. But they are of deep interest to 
anyone with a passion for the Florence of the great days, 
for it is here that the municipality preserves the most re- 
markable relics of buildings that have had to be destroyed. 
It is in fact the museum of the ancient city. Here, for 
example, is that famous figure of Abundance, in grey stone, 



268 S. MARCO 

which Donatello made for the old market, where the Piazza 
Vittorio Emmanuele now is, in the midst of which she 
poured forth her fruits from a cornucopia high on a column 
for all to see. Opposite is a magnificent doorway designed 
by Donatello for the Pazzi garden. Old windows, chimney- 
pieces, fragments of cornice, carved pillars, painted beams, 
coats of arms, are everywhere. 

In cell No. 3 is a pretty little coloured relief of the 
Virgin adoring, which I covet from a tabernacle in the old 
Piazza di Brunelleschi. Here too are relics of the guild 
houses of some of the smaller Arti, while perhaps the 
most humanly interesting thing of all is the great mourn- 
ful bell of S. Marco in Savonarola's time, known as La 
Piagnone. 

In the church of S. Marco lie two of the learned 
men, friends of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose talk at the 
Medici table was one of the youthful Michelangelo's edu- 
cative influences, what time he was studying in the Medici 
garden, close by : Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), the poet 
and the tutor of the three Medici boys, and the marvellous 
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), the enchanted scholar. 
Pico was one of the most fascinating and comely figures 
of his time. He was born in 1463, the son of the Count 
of Mirandola, and took early to scholarship, spending his 
time among philosophies as other boys among games or 
S. Antonio at his devotions, but by no means neglecting 
polished life too, for we know him to have been handsome, 
accomplished, and a knight in the court of Venus. In 1486 
he challenged the whole world to meet him in Rome and 
dispute publicly upon nine hundred theses ; but so many 
of them seemed likely to be paradoxes against the true 
faith, too brilliantly defended, that the Pope forbade the 
contest. Pico dabbled in the black arts, wrote learnedly 



PICO AND POLIZIANO 269 

(in his room at the Badia of Fiesole) on the Mosaic law, 
was an amorous poet in Italian as well as a serious poet in 
Latin, and in everything he did was interesting and curious, 
steeped in Renaissance culture, and inspired by the wish to 
reconcile the past and the present and humanize Christ and 
the Fathers. He found time also to travel much, and he 
gave most of his fortune to establish a fund to provide 
penniless girls with marriage portions. He had enough 
imagination to be the close friend both of Lorenzo de' 
Medici and Savonarola. Savonarola clothed his dead body 
in Dominican robes and made him posthumously one of the 
order which for some time before his death he had desired 
to join. He died in 1494 at the early age of thirty-one, 
two years after Lorenzo. 

Angelo Poliziano, known as Politian, was also a Renais- 
sance scholar and also a friend of Lorenzo, and his com- 
panion, with Pico, at his death-bed; but although in 
precocity, brilliancy of gifts, and literary charm he may be 
classed with Pico, the comparison there ends, for he was 
a gross sensualist of mean exterior and capable of much 
pettiness. He was tutor to Lorenzo's sons until their 
mother interfered, holding that his views were far too 
loose, but while in that capacity he taught also Michel- 
angelo and put him upon the designing of his relief of the 
battle of the Lapithse and Centaurs. At the time of 
Lorenzo and Giuliano's famous tournament in the Piazza 
of S. Croce, Poliziano wrote, as I have said, the descriptive 
allegorical poem which gave Botticelli ideas for his "Birth 
of Venus " and " Prima vera." He lives chiefly by his Latin 
poems ; but he did much to make the language of Tuscany 
a literary tongue. His elegy on the death of Lorenzo has 
real feeling in it and proves him to have esteemed that 
friend and patron. Like Pico, he survived Lorenzo only 



270 S. MARCO , 

two years, and he also was buried in Dominican robes. 
Perhaps the finest feat of Poliziano's life was his action 
in slamming the sacristy doors in the face of Lorenzo's 
pursuers on that fatal day in the Duomo when Giuliano 
de' Medici was stabbed. 

Ghirlandaio's fresco in S. Trinita of the granting of the 
charter to S. Francis gives portraits both of Poliziano and 
Lorenzo in the year 1485. Lorenzo stands in a little 
group of four in the right-hand corner, holding out his 
hand toward Poliziano, who, with Lorenzo's son Giuliano 
on his right and followed by two other boys, is advancing 
up the steps. Poliziano is seen again in a Ghirlandaio 
fresco at S. Maria Novella. 

From S. Marco we are going to SS. Annunziata, but first 
let us just take a few steps down the Via Cavour, in order to 
pass the Casino Medici, since it is built on the site of the 
old Medici garden where Lorenzo de' Medici established 
Bertoldo, the sculptor, as head of a school of instruction, 
amid those beautiful antiques which we have seen in the 
Uffizi, and where the boy Michelangelo was a student. 

A few steps farther on the left, towards the Fiesole heights, 
which we can see rising at the end of the street, we come, 
at No. 69, to a little doorway which leads to a little court- 
yard — the Chiostro dello Scalzo — decorated with frescoes 
by Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio and containing the 
earliest work of both artists. The frescoes are in mono- 
chrome, which is very unusual, but their interest is not 
impaired thereby : one does not miss other colours. No. 7, 
the Baptism of Christ, is the first fresco these two associ- 
ates ever did ; and several years elapsed between that and 
the best that are here, such as the group representing Charity 
and the figure of Faith, for the work was long interrupted. 
The boys on the staircase in the fresco which shows S. John 



PIERO DI COSIMO 271 

leaving his father's house are very much alive. This is by 
Franciabigio, as is also S. John meeting with Christ, a very 
charming scene. Andrea's best and latest is the Birth of 
the Baptist, which has the fine figure of Zacharias writing 
in it. But what he should be writing at that time and 
place one cannot imagine : more reasonably might he be 
called a physician preparing a prescription. On the wall 
is a terra-cotta bust of S. Antonio, making him much 
younger than is usual. 

Andrea's suave brush we find all over Florence, both in 
fresco and picture, and this is an excellent place to say some- 
thing of the man of whom English people have perhaps a 
more intimate impression than of any other of the old 
masters, by reason largely of Browning's poem and not a 
little by that beautiful portrait which for so long was erro- 
neously considered to represent the painter himself, in our 
National Gallery. Andrea's life was not very happy. No 
painter had more honour in his own day, and none had a 
greater number of pupils, but these stopped with him only 
a short time, owing to the demeanour towards them of 
Andrea's wife, who developed into a flirt and shrew, dowered 
with a thousand jealousies. Andrea, the son of a tailor, 
was born in 1486 and apprenticed to a goldsmith. Show- 
ing, however, more drawing than designing ability, he was 
transferred to a painter named Barile and then passed to 
that curious man of genius who painted the fascinating 
picture "The Death of Procris" which hangs near Andrea's 
portrait in our National Gallery — Piero di Cosimo. Piero 
carried oddity to strange lengths. He lived alone in in- 
describable dirt, and lived wholly on hard-boiled eggs, which 
he cooked, with his glue, by the fifty, and ate as he felt 
inclined. He forbade all pruning of trees as an act of in- 
subordination to Nature, and delighted in rain but cowered 



272 S. MARCO 

in terror from thunder and lightning. He peered curiously 
at clouds to find strange shapes in them, and in his pursuit 
of the grotesque examined the spittle of sick persons on the 
walls or ground, hoping for suggestions of monsters, com- 
bats of horses, or fantastic landscapes. But why this should 
have been thought madness in Cosimo when Leonardo in his 
directions to artists explicitly advises them to look hard at 
spotty walls for inspiration, I cannot say. He was also the 
first,to my knowledge, to don ear-caps in tedious society — as 
Herbert Spencer later used to do. He had many pupils, 
but latterly could not bear them in his presence and was 
therefore but an indifferent instructor. As a deviser of 
pageants he was more in demand than as a painter; but 
his brush was not idle. Both London and Paris have, I 
think, better examples of his genius than the Uffizi; but 
he is well represented at S. Spirito. 

Piero sent Andrea to the Palazzo Vecchio to study the 
Leonardo and Michelangelo cartoons, and there he met 
Franciabigio, with whom he struck up one of his close 
friendships, and together they took a studio and began to 
paint for a living. Their first work together was the 
Baptism of Christ at which we are now looking. The 
next commission after the Scalzo was to decorate the 
courtyard of the Convent of the Servi, now known as the 
Church of the Annunciation; and moving into adjacent 
lodgings, Andrea met Jacopo Sansovino, the Venetian 
sculptor, whose portrait by Bassano is in the Uffizi, a capable 
all-round man who had studied in Rome and was in the 
way of helping the young Andrea at all points. It 
was then too that he met the agreeable and convivial 
Rustici, of whom I have said something in the chapter on 
the Baptistery, and quickly became something of a blood — 
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ANDREA DEL SARTO 273 

the simplicity of the early artists had given place to dashing 
sophistication and the great period was nearly over. For 
this change the brilliant complex inquiring mind of Leo- 
nardo da Vinci was largely responsible, together with the 
encouragement and example of Lorenzo de' Medici and 
such of his cultured sceptical friends as Alberti, Pico della 
Mirandola, and Poliziano. But that is a subject too large 
for this book. Enough that a worldly splendour and vivacity 
had come into artistic life and Andrea was an impression- 
able young man in the midst of it. It does not seem to 
have affected the power and dexterity of his hand, but it 
made him a religious court-painter instead of a religious 
painter. His sweetness and an underlying note of pathos 
give his work a peculiar and genuine character ; but he is 
just not of the greatest. Not so great really as Luca Sig- 
norelli, for example, whom few visitors to the galleries 
rush at with gurgling cries of rapture as they rush at Andrea. 

When Andrea was twenty-six he married. The lady 
was the widow of a hatter. Andrea had long loved her, but 
the hatter clung outrageously to life. In 1513, however, 
she was free, and, giving her hand to the painter, his 
freedom passed for ever. Vasari being among Andrea's 
pupils may be trusted here, and Vasari gives her a bad 
character, which Browning completes. Andrea painted 
her often, notably in the fresco of the "Nativity of the 
Virgin" to which we shall soon come at the Annunziata : 
a fine statuesque woman by no means unwilling to have the 
most popular artist in Florence as her slave. 

Of the rest of Andrea's life I need say little. He grew 
steadily in favour and was always busy; he met Michel- 
angelo and admired him, and Michelangelo warned 
Raphael in Rome of a little fellow in Florence who would 
" make him sweat." Browning, in his monologue, makes 

T 



274 S. MARCO 

this remark of Michelangelo's, and the comparison be- 
tween Andrea and Raphael that follows, the kernel of 
the poem. 

Like Leonardo andRustici, Andrea accepted, in 1518, an 
invitation from Francis I to visit Paris, and once there be- 
gan to paint for that royal patron. But although his wife 
did not love him, she wanted him back, and in the midst 
of his success he returned, taking with him a large sum of 
money from Francis with which to buy for the king works 
of art in Italy. That money he misapplied to his own 
extravagant ends, and although Francis took no punitive 
steps, the event cannot have improved either Andrea's 
position or his peace of mind ; while it caused Francis to 
vow that he had done with Florentines. Andrea died in 
1531, of fever, nursed by no one, for his wife, fearing it 
might be the dreaded plague, kept away. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE SS. ANNUNZIATA AND THE SPEDALE DEGLI INNO- 

CENTI 

Andrea del Sarto again — Franciabigio outraged — Alessio Baldovinetti 

— Piero'de' Medici's church — An Easter Sunday congregation — An- 
drea's "Madonna del Sacco" — "The Statue and the Bust" — Henri IV 

— The Spedale degli Innocenti — Andrea della Robbia — Domenico 
Ghirlandaio — Cosimo I and the Etruscans — Bronzes and tapestries — 
Perugino's triptych — S. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi — "Very sacred 

human dust." 

FROM S. Marco it is an easy step, along the Via 
Sapienza, to the Piazza dell' Annunziata, where one 
finds the church of that name, the Palazzo Riccardi- 
Mannelli, and opposite it, gay with the famous della Robbia 
reliefs of swaddled children, the Spedale degli Innocenti. 
First the church, which is notable for possessing in its 
courtyard Andrea del Sarto's finest frescoes. This series, of 
which he was the chief painter, with his friend Franciabigio 
again as his principal ally, depict scenes in the life of the 
Virgin and S. Filippo. The scene of the Birth of the 
Virgin has been called the triumph of fresco painting, and 
certainly it is very gay and life-like in that medium. 
The whole picture is very charming and easy, with the 
pleasantest colouring imaginable and pretty details, such 
as the washing of the baby and the boy warming his hands, 
while of the two women in the foreground, that on the left, 
facing the spectator, is a portrait of Andrea's wife, Lucrezia. 
In the Arrival of the Magi we find Andrea himself, the 

275 



276 ANNUNZIATA AND SPEDALE INNOCENTI 

figure second from the right-hand side, pointing; while 
next to him, on the left, is his friend Jacopo Sansovino. 
The "Dead Man Restored to Life by S.Filippo" is Andrea's 
next best. Franciabigio did the scene of the Marriage of 
the Virgin, which contains another of his well-drawn boys 
on the steps. The injury to this fresco — the disfigurement 
of Mary's face — was the work of the painter himself, in 
a rage that the monks should have inspected it before it 
was ready. Vasari is interesting on this work. He draws 
attention to it as illustrating "Joseph's great faith in tak- 
ing her, his face expressing as much fear as joy." He also 
says that the blow which the man is giving Joseph was part 
of the marriage ceremony at that time in Florence. 

Franciabigio, in spite of his action in the matter of 
this fresco, seems to have been a very sweet-natured man, 
who painted rather to be able to provide for his poor re- 
lations than from any stronger inner impulse, and when 
he saw some works by Raphael gave up altogether, as 
Verrocchio gave up after Leonardo matured. Franciabigio 
was a few years older than Andrea, but died at the same 
age. Possibly it was through watching his friend's domes- 
tic troubles that he remained single, remarking that he 
who takes a wife endures strife. His most charming work 
is that "Madonna of the Well" in the Uffizi, which is 
reproduced in this volume. Franciabigio's master was 
Mariotto Albertinelli, who had learned from Cosimo 
Rosselli, the teacher of Piero di Cosimo, Andrea's master — 
another illustration of the interdependence of Florentine 
artists. 

One of the most attractive works in the courtyard must 
once have been the "Adoration of the Shepherds" by Alessio 
Baldovinetti, at the left of the entrance to the church. It 
is badly damaged and the colour has gone, but one can see 



EASTER SUNDAY 277 

that the valley landscape, when it was painted, was a 
dream of gaiety and happiness. 

The particular treasure of the church is the extremely 
ornate chapel of the Virgin, containing a picture of the Vir- 
gin displayed once a year on the Feast of the Annunciation, 
March 25th, in the painting of which the Virgin herself took 
part, descending from heaven for that purpose. The artist 
thus divinely assisted was Pietro Cavallini, a pupil of 
Giotto. The silver shrine for the picture was designed by 
Michelozzo and was a beautiful thing before the canopy 
and all the distressing accessories were added. It was 
made at the order of Piero de' Medici, who was as fond of 
this church as his father Cosimo was of S. Lorenzo. Miche- 
lozzo only designed it ; the sculpture was done by Pagno di 
Lapo Portigiani, whose Madonna is over the tomb of Pope 
John by Donatello and Michelozzo in the Baptistery. 

Among the altar-pieces are two by Perugino ; but of 
Florentine altar-pieces one can say little or nothing in a 
book of reasonable dimensions. There are so many and 
they are for the most part so difficult to see. Now and then 
one arrests the eye and holds it ; but for the most part they 
go unstudied. The rotunda of the choir is interesting, for 
here we meet again Alberti, who completed it from designs 
by Michelozzo. It does not seem to fit the church from 
within, and even less so from without, but it is a fine 
structure. The seventeenth-century painting of the 
dome is almost impressive. 

But one can forget and forgive all the church's gaudi- 
ness and floridity when the choir is in good voice and the 
strings play Palestrina as they did last Easter Sunday. 
The Annunziata is famous for its music, and on the great 
occasions people crowd there as nowhere else. At High 
Mass the singing was fine but the instrumental music finer. 



278 ANNUNZIATA AND SPEDALE INNOCENTI 

One is accustomed to seeing vicarious worship in Italy; 
but never was there so vicarious a congregation as ours, 
and indeed if it had not been for the sight of the busy 
celibates at the altar one would not have known that one 
was worshipping at all. The culmination of detachment 
came when a family of Siamese or Burmese children, in 
native dress, entered. A positive hum went round, and 
not an eye but was fixed on the little Orientals. When, 
however, the organ was for a while superseded and the 
violas and violins quivered under the plangent melody of 
Pales trina, our roving attention was fixed and held. 

I am not sure that the Andrea in the cloisters is not the 
best of all his work. It is very simple and wholly beautiful, 
and in spite of years of ravage the colouring is still won- 
derful, perhaps indeed better for the hand of Time. It 
is called the "Madonna del Sacco" (grain sack), and fills 
the lunette over the door leading from the church. The 
Madonna — Andrea's favourite type, with the eyes set widely 
in the flat brow over the little trustful nose — has her Son, 
older than usual, sprawling on her knee. Her robes are 
ample and rich ; a cloak of green is over her pretty head. 
By her sits S. Joseph, on the sack, reading with very long 
sight. That is all; but one does not forget it. 

For the rest the cloisters are a huddle of memorial slabs 
and indifferent frescoes. In the middle is a well with nice 
iron work. No grass at all. The second cloisters, into 
which it is not easy to get, have a gaunt John the Baptist 
in terra-cotta by Michelozzo. 

On leaving the church, our natural destination is the 
Spedale, on the left, but one should pause a moment in 
the doorway of the courtyard (if the beggars who are always 
there do not make it too difficult) to look down the Via 
de' Servi running straight away to the cathedral, which, 



"THE STATUE AND THE BUST" 279 

with Its great red warm dome, closes the street. The 
statue in the middle of the piazza is that of the Grand 
Duke Ferdinand by Giovanni da Bologna, cast from metal 
taken from the Italians' ancient enemies the Turks, while 
the fountains are by Tacca, Giovanni's pupil, who made 
the bronze boar at the Mercato Nuovo. " The Synthetical 
Guide Book," from which I have already quoted, warns its 
readers not to overlook "the puzzling bees" at the back 
of Ferdinand's statue. "Try to count them," it adds. (I 
accepted the challenge and found one hundred and one.) 
The bees have reference to Ferdinand's emblem — a swarm 
of these insects, with the words "Majestate tantum." The 
statue, by the way, is interesting for two other reasons than 
its subject. First, it is that to which Browning's poem " The 
Statue and the Bust" refers, and which, according to the 
poet, was set here at Ferdinand's command to gaze ador- 
ingly for ever at the della Robbia bust of the lady whom he 
loved in vain. But the bust no longer is visible, if ever it 
was. John of Douay (as Gian Bologna was also called) — 

John of Douay shall effect my plan. 
Set me on horseback here aloft, 
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can, 

In the very square I have crossed so oft : 
That men may admire, when future suns 
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, 

While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze — 
Admire and say, " when he was alive 
How he would take his pleasure once ! " 

The other point of interest is that when Maria de' Medici, 
Ferdinand's niece, wished to erect a statue of Henri IV 
(her late husband) at the Pont Neuf in Paris, she asked to 
borrow Gian Bologna. But the sculptor was too old to 



280 ANNUNZIATA AND SPEDALE INNOCENTI 

go and therefore only a bronze cast' of this same horse 
was offered. In the end Tacca completed both statues, 
and Henri IV was set up in 1614 (after having fallen 
overboard on the voyage from Leghorn to Havre). The 
present statue at the Pont Neuf is, however, a modern 
substitute. 

The fagade of the Spedale degli Innocenti, or children's 
hospital, when first seen by the visitor evokes perhaps the 
quickest and happiest cry of recognition in all Florence 
by reason of its row of della Robbia babies, each in its 
blue circle, reproductions of which have gone all over the 
world. These are thought to be by Andrea, Luca's 
nephew, and were added long after the building was 
completed. Luca probably helped him. The hospital 
was begun by Brunelleschi at the cost of old Giovanni 
de' Medici, Cosimo's father, but the Guild of the Silk 
Weavers, for whom Luca made the exquisite coat of arms 
on Or San Michele, took it over and finished it. Andrea 
not only modelled the babies outside but the beautiful 
Annunciation (of which I give a reproduction in this 
volume) in the court : one of his best works. The photo- 
graph will show how full of pretty thoughts it is, but 
in colour it is more charming still and the green of the 
lily stalks is not the least delightful circumstance. Not 
only among works of sculpture but among Annuncia- 
tions this relief holds a very high place. Few of the 
artists devised a scene in which the great news was brought 
more engagingly, in sweeter surroundings, or received more 
simply. 

The door of the chapel close by leads to another work 
of art equally adapted to its situation — Ghirlandaio's 
Adoration of the Magi : one of the perfect pictures for 
children. We have seen Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the 




THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN 

FROM 1HE PRESCO BY TRA ANGELICO IN THE CONVENT OF S. MARCO 



ETRUSCAN RELICS 281 

Shepherds at the Accademia : this is its own brother. 
It has the sweetest, mildest little Mother, and in addition 
to the elderly Magi two tiny little saintlings adore too. 
In the distance is an enchanted landscape about a fairy 
estuary. 

This hospital is a very busy one, and the authorities are 
glad to show it to visitors who really take an interest in 
such work Rich Italians carry on a fine rivalry in 
generosity to such institutions. Bologna, for instance, 
could probably give lessons in thoughtful charity to the 
whole world. 

The building opposite the hospital has a loggia which is 
notable for a series of four arches, like those of the Mercato 
Nuovo, and in summer for the flowers that hang down from 
the little balconies. A pretty building. Before turning 
to the right under the last of the arches of the hospital 
loggia, which opens on the Via della Colonna and from 
the piazza always frames such a charming picture of houses 
and mountains, it is well, with so much of Andrea del 
Sarto's work warm in one's memory, to take a few steps 
up the Via Gino Capponi (which also always frames an 
Apennine vista under its arch) to No. 24, and see Andrea's 
house, on the right, marked with a tablet. 

In the Via della Colonna we find, at No. 26 on the left, 
the Palazzo Crocetta, which is now a Museum of Antiqui- 
ties, and for its Etruscan exhibits is of the greatest historical 
value and interest to visitors to Tuscany, such as ourselves. 
For here you may see what civilization was like centuries 
before Christ and Rome. The beginnings of the Etruscan 
people are indistinct, but about 1000 b.c. has been agreed 
to as the dawn of their era. Etruria comprised Tuscany, 
Perugia, and Rome itself. Florence has no remains, but 
Fiesole was a fortified Etruscan town, and many traces of its 



282 ANNUNZIATA AND SPEDALE INNOCENTI 

original builders may be seen there, together with Etruscan 
relics in the little museum. For the best reconstructions 
of an Etruscan city one must go to Volterra, where so 
many of the treasures in the present building were found. 

The Etruscans in their heyday were the most powerful 
people in the world, but after the fifth century their 
supremacy gradually disappeared, the Gauls on the one 
side and the Romans on the other wearing them down. 
All our knowledge of them comes through the spade. 
Excavations at Volterra and elsewhere have revealed some 
thousands of inscriptions which have been in part de- 
ciphered; but nothing has thrown so much light on this 
accomplished people as their habit of providing the ashes 
of their dead with everything likely to be needed for the 
next world, whose requirements fortunately so exactly 
tallied with those of this that a complete system of domes- 
tic civilization can be deduced. In arts and sciences 
they were most enviably advanced, as a visit to the British 
Museum will show in a moment. But it is to this Floren- 
tine Museum of Antiquities that all students of Etruria 
must go. The garden contains a number of the tombs 
themselves, rebuilt and refurnished exactly as they were 
found ; while on the ground floor is the amazing collection 
of articles which the tombs yielded. The grave has pre- 
served them for us, not quite so perfectly as the volcanic 
dust of Vesuvius preserved the domestic appliances of 
Pompeii, but very nearly so. Jewels, vessels, weapons, 
ornaments — many of them of a beauty never since repro- 
duced — are to be seen in profusion, now gathered together 
for study only a short distance from the districts in which 
centuries ago they were made and used for actual life. 

Upstairs we find relics of an older civilization still, the 
Egyptian, and a few rooms of works of art, all found 



TAPESTRIES 283 

in Etruscan soil, the property of the Pierpont Morgans 
and George Saltings of that ancient day, who had collected 
them exactly as we do now. Certain of the statues are 
world-famous. Here, for example, in Sala IX, is the bronze 
Minerva which was found near Arezzo in 1554 by Cosimo's 
workmen. Here is the Chimaera, also from Arezzo in 1554, 
which Cellini restored for Cosimo and tells us about in his 
Autobiography. Here is the superb Orator from Lake 
Trasimene, another of Cosimo's discoveries. 

In Sala X look at the bronze situla in an isolated glass 
case, of such a peacock blue as only centuries could give it. 
Upstairs in Sala XVI are many more Greek and Roman 
bronzes, among which I noticed a faun with two pipes as 
being especially good; while the little room leading from 
it has some fine life-size heads, including a noble one of a 
horse, and the famous Idolino on its elaborate pedestal — a 
full-length Greek bronze from the earth of Pesaro, where it 
was found in 1530. 

The top floor is given to tapestries and embroideries. 
The collection is vast and comprises much foreign work; 
but Cosimo I introducing tapestry weaving into Florence, 
many of the examples come from the city's looms. The 
finest, or at any rate most interesting, series is that de- 
picting the court of France under Catherine de' Medici, 
with portraits : very sumptuous and gay examples of 
Flemish work. 

The trouble at Florence is that one wants the days to 
be ten times as long in order that one may see its wonder- 
ful possessions properly. Here is this dry-looking archae- 
ological museum, with antipathetic custodians at the 
door who refuse to get change for twenty -lira pieces : 
nothing could be more unpromising than they or their 
building ; and yet you find yourself instantly among count- 



284 ANNUNZIATA AND SPEDALE INNOCENTI 

less vestiges of a past people who had risen to power and 
crumbled again before Christ was born — but at a time 
when man was so vastly more sensitive to beauty than he 
now is that every appliance for daily life was the work of 
an artist. Well, a collection like this demands days and 
days of patient examination, and one has only a few hours. 
Were I Joshua — had I his curious gift — it is to Florence I 
would straightway fare. The sun should stand still there : 
no rock more motionless. 

Continuing along the Via della Colonna, we come, on 
the right, at No. 8, to the convent of S. Maria Maddalena 
de' Pazzi, which is now a barracks but keeps sacred one 
room in which Perugino painted a crucifixion, his master- 
piece in fresco. The work is in three panels, of which that 
on the left, representing the Virgin and S. Bernard, is the 
most beautiful. Indeed, there is no more beautiful light 
in any picture we shall see, and the Virgin's melancholy 
face is inexpressibly sweet. Perugino is best represented 
at the Accademia, and there are works of his at the Uffizi 
and Pitti and in various Florentine churches ; but here he 
is at his best. Vasari tells us that he made much money 
and was very fond of it ; also that he liked his young wife 
to wear light head-dresses both out of doors and in the 
house, and often dressed her himself. His master was 
Verrocchio and his best pupil Raphael. 

S. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, a member of the same 
family that plotted against the Medici and owned the 
sacred flints, was born in 1566, and, says Miss Dunbar, 1 
"showed extraordinary piety from a very tender age." 
When only a child herself she used to teach small children, 
and she daily carried lunch to the prisoners. Her real 
name was Catherine, but becoming a nun she called herself 
1 In "A Dictionary of Saintly Women." 



E.B.B. 285 

Mary Magdalene. In an illness in which she was given 
up for dead, she lay on her bed for forty days, during 
which she saw continual visions, and then recovered. Like 
S. Catherine of Bologna she embroidered well and painted 
miraculously, and she once healed a leprosy by licking it. 
She died in 1607. 

The old English Cemetery, as it is usually called — the 
Protestant Cemetery, as it should be called — is an oval 
garden of death in the Piazza Donatello, at the end of 
the Via di Pinti and the Via Alfieri, rising up from the 
boulevard that surrounds the northern half of Florence. 
(The new Protestant Cemetery is outside the city on the 
road to the Certosa.) I noticed, as I walked beneath the 
cypresses, the grave of Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet of 
" Dipsychus," who died here in Florence on November 13th, 
1861 ; of Walter Savage Landor, that old lion (born 
January 30th, 1775 ; died September 17th, 1864), of whom 
I shall say much more in a later chapter ; of his son Arnold, 
who was born in 1818 and died in 1871 ; and of Mrs. 
Holman Hunt, who died in 1866. But the most famous 
grave is that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who lies be- 
neath a massive tomb that bears only the initials E.B.B. 
and the date, 1861. "Italy," wrote James Thomson, the 
poet of "The City of Dreadful Night/' on hearing of Mrs. 
Browning's death, 

"Italy, you hold in trust 
Very sacred human dust." 



CHAPTER XX 

THE CASCINE AND THE ABNO 

Florence's Bois de Boulogne — Shelley — The races — The game of 
Pallone — SS. Ognissanti — Botticelli and Ghirlandaio — Amerigo Ves- 
pucci — The Platonic Academy's garden — Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai — 
Melancholy decay — Two smiling boys — The Corsini palace — The 
Trinita bridge — The Borgo San Jacopo from the back — Home fishing — 
SS. Apostoli — A sensitive river — The Ponte Vecchio — The goldsmiths 

— S. Stefano. 

THE Cascine is the "Bois" of Florence; but it does not 
compare with the Parisian expanse either in size or 
attraction. Here the wealthy Florentines drive, the mid- 
dle classes saunter and ride bicycles, the poor enjoy picnics, 
and the English take country walks. The further one goes 
the better it is, and the better also the river, which at the 
very end of the woods becomes such a stream as the plein- 
airistes love, with pollarded trees on either side. Among 
the trees of one of these woods nearly a hundred years ago, 
a walking Englishman named Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote 
his " Ode to the West Wind." 

The Cascine is a Bois also in having a race-course in it — 
a small course with everything about it on a little scale, 
grandstand, betting boxes, and all. And why not ? — for 
after all Florence is quite small in size, however remarkable 
in character. Here funny little race-meetings are held, 
beginning on Easter Monday and continuing at intervals 
until the weather gets too hot. The Florentines pour out 
in their hundreds and lie about in the long grass among the 

286 



PALLONE 287 

wild flowers, and in their fives and tens back their fancies. 
The system is the pari-mutuel, and here one seems to be 
more at its mercy even than in France. The odds keep 
distressingly low ; but no one seems to be either elated or 
depressed, whatever happens. To be at the races is the 
thing — to walk about and watch the people and enjoy the 
air. It is the most orderly frugal scene, and the baleful 
and mysterious power of the racehorse to poison life and 
landscape, as in England, does not exist here. 

To the Cascine also in the spring and autumn several 
hundred Florentine men come every afternoon to see the 
game of pallone and risk a few lire on their favourite 
players. Mr. Ruskin, whose "Mornings in Florence'* is 
still the textbook of the devout, is severe enough upon 
those visitors who even find it in their hearts to shop and 
gossip in the city of Giotto. What then would he have 
said of one who has spent not a few afternoon hours, 
between five and six, in watching the game of pallone ? 
I would not call pallone a good game. Compared with 
tennis, it is nothing; compared with lawn tennis, it is 
poor ; compared with football, it is anaemic ; yet in an 
Italian city, after the galleries have closed, on a warm 
afternoon, it will do, and it will more than do as affording 
an opportunity of seeing muscular Italian athletes in the 
pink of condition. The game is played by six, three each 
side :' a battitore, who smites the ball, which is served to him 
very much as in rounders ; the spalla, who plays back ; and 
the terzino, who plays forward. The court is sixty or more 
yards long, on one side being a very high wall and on the 
other and at each end netting. The implements are the 
ball, which is hollow and of leather, about half the size of 
a football, and a cylinder studded with spikes, rather like 
a huge fir cone or pine-apple, which is placed over the 



288 THE CASCINE AND THE ARNO 

wrist and forearm to hit the ball with; and the game is 
much as in tennis, only there is no central net : merely 
a line. Each man's ambition, however, is less to defeat 
the returning power of the foe than to paralyse it by 
hitting the ball out of reach. It is as though a batsman 
were out if he failed to hit three wides. 

A good battitore, for instance, can smite the ball right 
down the sixty yards into the net, above the head of the 
opposing spalla who stands awaiting it at the far end. Such 
a stroke is to the English mind a blot, and it is no un- 
common thing, after each side has had a good rally, to see 
the battitore put every ball into the net in this way and 
so win the game without his opponents having one return ; 
which is the very negation of sport. Each inning lasts 
until one side has gained eight points, the points going to 
whichever player makes the successful stroke. This means 
that the betting — and of course there is betting — is upon 
individuals and not upon sides. 

The pari-mutuel system is that which is adopted at both 
the pallone courts in Florence (there is another at the 
Piazza Beccaria), and the unit is two lire. Bets are in- 
vited on the winner and the second, and place-money is 
paid on both. No wonder then that as the game draws to 
a close the excitement becomes intense; while during its 
progress feeling runs high too. For how can a young 
Florentine who has his money on, say, Gabri the battitore, 
withhold criticism when Gabri' s arm fails and the ball drops 
comfortably for the terzino Ugo to smash it into Gabri's 
net ? Such a lapse should not pass unnoticed ; nor does it. 

From the Cascine we may either return to Florence 
along the banks of the river, or cross the river by the vile 
iron Ponte Sospeso and enter the city again, on the Pitti 
side, by the imposing Porta S. Frediano. Supposing that 



INJUSTICE TO COLUMBUS 289 

we return by the Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci there is little 
to notice, beyond costly modern houses of a Portland Place 
type and the inevitable Garibaldi statue, until, just past 
the oblique pescaja (or weir), we see across the Piazza 
Manin the church of All Saints — S. Salvadore d'Ognissanti, 
which must be visited since it is the burial-place of Bot- 
ticelli and Amerigo Vespucci, the chapel of the Vespucci 
family being painted by Ghirlandaio ; and since here too lies 
Botticelli's beautiful Simonetta, who so untimely died. 
According to Vasari the frescoes of S. Jerome by Ghirlandaio 
and S. Augustine by Botticelli were done in competition. 
They were painted, as it happens, elsewhere, but moved 
here without injury. I think the S. Jerome is the more 
satisfying, a benevolent old scientific author — a Lord 
Avebury of the canon — with his implements about him on 
a tapestry tablecloth, a brass candlestick, his cardinal's hat, 
and a pair of tortoise-shell eyeglasses handy. S. Augustine 
is also scientific ; astronomical books and instruments sur- 
round him too. His tablecloth is linen. 

Amerigo Vespucci, whose statue we saw in the Uffizi 
portico colonnade, was a Florentine by birth who settled in 
Spain and took to exploration. His discoveries were im- 
portant, but America is not really among them, for Colum- 
bus, whom he knew and supported financially, got there 
first. By a mistake in the date in his account of his travels, 
Vespucci's name came to be given to the new continent, 
and it was then too late to alter it. He became a naturalized 
Spaniard and died in 1512. Columbus indeed suffers 
in Florence; for had it not been for Vespucci, America 
would no doubt be called Columbia; while Brunelleschi 
anticipated him in the egg trick. 

The church is very proud of possessing the robe of S. 
Francis, which is displayed once a year on October 4th. In 
u 



290 THE CASCINE AND THE ARNO 

the refectory is a " Last Supper " by Ghirlandaio, not quite 
so good as that which we saw at S. Marco, but very similar, 
and, like that, deriving from Castagno's at the Cenacolo di 
Sant' Apollonia. The predestined Judas is once more on 
the wrong side of the table. 

Returning to the river bank again, we are at once among 
the hotels and pensions, which continue cheek by jowl right 
away to the Ponte Vecchio and beyond. In the Piazza 
Goldoni, where the Ponte Carraia springs off, several 
streets meet, best of them and busiest of them being that 
Via della Vigna Nuova which one should miss few oppor- 
tunities of walking along, for here is the palazzo — at No. 20 

— which Leon Battista Alberti designed for the Rucellai. 
The Rucellai family's present palace, I may say here, is in 
the Via della Scala, and by good fortune I found at the 
door sunning himself a complacent major-domo who, the 
house being empty of its august owners, allowed me to 
walk through into the famous garden — the Orti Oricellari 

— where the Platonic Academy met for a while in Bernardo 
Rucellai's day. A monument inscribed with their names 
has been erected among the evergreens. Afterwards the 
garden was given by Francis I to his beloved Bianca 
Capella. Its natural beauties are impaired by a gigantic 
statue of Polyphemus, bigger than any other statue in 
Florence. 

The new Rucellai palace does not compare with the old, 
which is, I think, the most beautiful of all the private houses 
of the great day, and is more easily seen too, for there is 
a little piazza in front of it. The palace, with its lovely 
design and its pilastered windows, is now a rookery, 
while various industries thrive beneath it. Part of the 
right side has been knocked away ; but even still the pro- 
portions are noble. This is a bad quarter for vandalism ; 




THE VIA DE' VAGELLAI FROM THE PIAZZA S. JACOPO TRAFOSSI 



THE RUCELLAI CHAPEL 291 

for in the piazza opposite is a most exquisite little loggia, 
built in 1468, the three lovely arches of which have been 
filled in and now form the windows of an English estab- 
lishment known as " The Artistic White House." An ab- 
surd name, for if it were really artistic it would open up the 
arches again. 

The Rucellai chapel, behind the palace, is in the Via della 
Spada, and the key must be asked for in the palace stables. 
It is in a shocking state, and quite in keeping with the 
traditions of the neighbourhood, while the old church of 
S. Pancrazio, its neighbour, is now a Government tobacco 
factory. The Rucellai chapel contains a model of the 
Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusalem, in marble and intarsia, by 
the great Alberti — one of the most jewel-like little build- 
ings imaginable. Within it are the faint vestiges of a fresco 
which the stable-boy calls a Botticelli, and indeed the 
hands and faces of the angels, such as one can see of them 
with a farthing dip, do not render the suggestion impossible. 
On the altar is a terra-cotta Christ which he calls a Dona- 
tello, and again he may be right ; but fury at a condition of 
things that can permit such a beautiful place to be so des- 
ecrated renders it impossible to be properly appreciative. 

Since we are here, instead of returning direct to the 
river let us go a few yards along this Via della Spada to 
the left, cross the Via de' Fossi, and so come to the busy 
Via di Pallazzuolo, on the left of which, past the piazza of 
S. Paolino, is the little church of S. Francesco de' Van- 
chetoni. This church is usually locked, but the key is 
next door, on the right, and it has to be obtained be- 
cause over the right sacristy door is a boy's head by 
Rossellino, and over the left a boy's head by Desiderio da 
Settignano, and each is joyful and perfect. 

The Via de' Fossi will bring us again to the Piazza 



292 THE CASCINE AND THE ARNO 

Goldoni and the Arno, and a few yards farther along there 
is a palace to be seen, the Corsini, the only palazzo still 
inhabited by its family to which strangers are admitted — 
the long low white fagade with statues on the top and 
a large courtyard, on the Lungarno Corsini, just after 
the Piazza Goldoni. It is not very interesting and be- 
longs to the wrong period, the seventeenth century. It 
is open on fixed days, and free save that one manservant 
receives the visitor and another conducts him from room 
to room. There are many pictures, but few of outstanding 
merit, and the authorship of some of these has been 
challenged. Thus, the cartoon of Julius II, which is called 
a Raphael and seems to be the sketch for one of the well- 
known portraits at the Pitti, Uffizi, or our National Gal- 
lery, is held to be not by Raphael at all. Among the 
pleasantest pictures are a Lippo Lippi Madonna and Child, 
a Filippino Lippi Madonna and Child with Angels, and a 
similar group by Botticelli ; but one has a feeling that Carlo 
Dolci and Guido Reni are the true heroes of the house. 
Guido Reni's Lucrezia Romana, with a dagger which she 
has already thrust two inches into her bosom, as though it 
were cheese, is one of the most foolish pictures I ever saw. 
The Corsini family having given the world a pope, a case 
of papal vestments is here. It was this Pope when Cardinal 
Corsini who said to Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Piozzi, 
meeting him in Florence in 1785, " Well, Madam, you 
never saw one of us red-legged partridges before, I believe." 
There may be more beautiful bridges in the world than 
the Trinita, but I have seen none. Its curve is so gentle 
and soft, and its three arches so light and graceful, that 
I wonder that whenever new bridges are necessary the 
authorities do not insist upon the Trinita being copied. 
The Ponte Vecchio, of course, has a separate interest of its 



THE TRINITA BRIDGE 293 

own, and stands apart, like the Rial to. It is a bridge 
by chance, one might almost say. But the Trinita is a 
bridge in intent and supreme at that, the most perfect union 
of two river banks imaginable. It shows to what depths 
modern Florence can fall — how little she esteems her past 

— that the iron bridge by the Cascine should ever have 
been built. 

The various yellows of Florence — the prevailing colours 

— are spread out nowhere so favourably as on the Pitti 
side of the river between the Trinita and the Ponte Vecchio, 
on the backs of the houses of the Borgo San Jacopo, and 
just so must this row have looked for four hundred years. 
Certain of the occupants of these tenements, even on the 
upper floors, have fishing nets, on pulleys, which they let 
down at intervals during the day for the minute fish which 
seem to be as precious to Italian fishermen as sparrows and 
wrens to Italian gunners. 

The great palace at the Trinita $nd of this stretch of 
yellow buildings — the Frescobaldi — must have been very 
striking when the loggia was open : the three rows of 
double arches that are now walled in. From this point, 
as well as from similar points on the other side of the 
Ponte Vecchio, one realizes the mischief done by Cosimo I's 
secret passage across it; for not only does the passage 
impose a straight line on a bridge that was never intended 
to have one, but it cuts Florence in two. If it were not 
for its large central arches one would, from the other 
bridges or the embankment, see nothing whatever of the 
further side of the city ; but as it is, through these arches 
one has heavenly vignettes. 

We leave the river again for a few minutes about fifty 
yards along the Lungarno Acciaioli beyond the Trinita 
and turn up a narrow passage to see the little church of 



294 THE CASCINE AND THE ARNO 

SS. Apostoli, where there is a delightful gay ciborium, all 
bright colours and happiness, attributed to Andrea della 
Robbia, with pretty cherubs and pretty angels, and a be- 
nignant Christ and flowers and fruit which cannot but 
chase away gloom and dubiety. Here also is a fine tomb 
by the sculptor of the elaborate chimney-piece which we 
saw in the Bargello, Benedetto da Rovezzano, who also 
designed the church's very beautiful door. Whether or 
not it is true that SS. Apostoli was built by Charlemagne, 
it is certainly very old and architecturally of great interest. 
Vasari says that Brunelleschi acquired from it his inspira- 
tion for S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito. To many Florentines 
its principal importance is its custody of the Pazzi flints 
for the igniting of the sacred fire which in turn ignites the 
famous Carro. 

Returning again to the embankment, we are quickly at 
the Ponte Vecchio, where it is pleasant at all times to 
loiter and observe both the river and the people; while 
from its central arches one sees the mountains. From 
no point are the hill of S. Miniato and its stately cypresses 
more beautiful; but one cannot see the church itself — 
only the church of S. Niccolb below it, and of course 
the bronze " David.'' In dry weather the Arno is green ; 
in rainy weather yellow. It is so sensitive that one 
can almost see it respond to the most distant shower; 
but directly the rain falls and it is fed by a thousand 
Apennine torrents, it foams past this bridge in fury. 
The Ponte Vecchio was the work, upon a Roman founda- 
tion, of Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's godson, in the middle of 
the fourteenth century, but the shops are, of course, more 
recent. The passage between the Pitti and Uffizi was 
added in 1564. Gaddi, who was a fresco painter first and 
architect afterwards, was employed because Giotto was 



THE PONTE VECCHIO 295 

absent in Milan, Giotto being the first thought of every 
one in difficulties at that time. The need, however, was 
pressing, for a flood in 1333 had destroyed a large part 
of the Roman bridge. Gaddi builded so well that when, 
two hundred and more years later, another flood severely 
damaged three other bridges, the Ponte Vecehio was un- 
harmed. None the less it is not Gaddi's bust but Cellini's 
that has the post of honour in the centre; but this is, of 
course, because Cellini was a goldsmith, and it is to gold- 
smiths, that the shops belong. Once it was the butchers' 
quarter ! 

I never cross the Ponte Vecehio and see these artificers 
in their blouses through the windows, without wonder- 
ing if in any of their boy assistants is the Michelangelo, 
or Orcagna, or Ghirlandaio, or even Cellini, of the future, 
since all of those, and countless others of the Renaissance 
masters, began in precisely this way. 

The odd thing is that one is on the Ponte Vecehio, from 
either end, before one knows it to be a bridge at all. A 
street of sudden steepness is what it seems to be. Not 
the least charming thing upon it is the masses of groundsel 
which have established themselves on the pent roof over 
the goldsmiths' shops. Every visitor to Florence must 
have longed to occupy one of these little bridge houses ; 
but I am not aware that any has done so. 

One of the oldest streets in Florence must be the Via 
Girolami, from the Ponte Vecehio to the Uffizi, under an 
arch. A turning to the left brings one to the Piazza S. 
Stefano, where the barn-like church of S. Stef ano is entered : 
and close by is the Torre de' Girolami, where S. Zenobius 
lived. S. Stefano, although it is now so easily overlooked, 
was of importance in its day, and it was here that Niccolo 
da Uzzano, the leader of the nobles, held a meeting to 



296 THE CASCINE AND THE ARNO 

devise means of checking the growing power of the people 
early in the fifteenth century and was thwarted by old 
Giovanni de' Medici. From that thwarting proceeded the 
power of the Medici family and the gloriously endowed 
Florence that we travel to see. 



CHAPTER XXI 

S. MARIA NOVELLA 

The great churches of Florence — A Dominican cathedral — The " De- 
cameron '.' begins — Domenico Ghirlandaio — Alessio Baldovinetti — The 
Louvre — The S. Maria Novella frescoes — Giovanni and Lorenzo Torna- 
buoni — Ruskin implacable — Cimabue's Madonna — Filippino Lippi — 
Orcagna's "Last Judgment" — The Cloisters of Florence — The Spanish 
Chapel — S. Dominic triumphant — Giotto at his sweetest — The 
"Wanderer's" doom — The Piazza as an arena. 

S MARIA NOVELLA is usually bracketed with S. 
Croce as the most interesting Florentine church after 
the Duomo, but S. Lorenzo has of course to be reckoned 
with very seriously. I think that for interest I should place 
S. Maria Novella fifth, including also the Baptistery before 
it, but architecturally second. Its interior is second in 
beauty only to S. Croce. S. Croce is its immediate reli- 
gious rival, for it was because the Dominicans had S. Maria 
Novella, begun in 1278, that several years later the Fran- 
ciscans determined to have an equally important church 
and built S. Croce. The S. Maria Novella architects were 
brothers of the order, but Talenti, whom we saw at work 
both on Giotto's tower and Or San Michele, built the cam- 
panile, and Leon Battista Alberti the marble fagade, many 
years later. The richest patrons of S. Maria Novella — 
corresponding to the Medici at S. Lorenzo and the Bardi 
at S. Croce — were the Rucellai, whose palace, designed 
also by the wonderful versatile Alberti, we have seen. 

297 



298 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

The interior of S. Maria Novella is very fine and spacious, 
and it gathers and preserves an exquisite light at all times 
of the day. Nowhere in Florence is there a finer aisle, 
with the roof springing so nobly and masterfully from the 
eight columns on either side. The whole effect, like that 
of S. Croce, is rather northern, the result of the yellow and 
brown hues ; but whereas S. Croce has a crushing flat roof, 
this one is all soaring gladness. 

The finest view of the interior is from the altar steps 
looking back to the beautiful circular window over the en- 
trance, a mass of happy colour. In the afternoon the little 
plain circular windows high up in the aisle shoot shafts of 
golden light upon the yellow walls. The high altar of 
inlaid marble is, I think, too bright and too large. The 
church is more impressive on Good Friday, when over 
this altar is built a Calvary with the crucifix on the sum- 
mit and life-size mourners at its foot; while a choir and 
string orchestra make superbly mournful music. 

I like to think that it was within the older S. Maria 
Novella that those seven mirthful young ladies of Florence 
remained one morning in 1348, after Mass, to discuss plans 
of escape from the city during the plague. As here they 
chatted and plotted, there entered the church three young 
men ; and what simpler than to engage them as companions 
in their retreat, especially as all three, like all seven of the 
young women, were accomplished tellers of stories with 
no fear whatever of Mrs. Grundy? And thus the "De- 
cameron" of Giovanni Boccaccio came about. 

S. Maria Novella also resembles S. Croce in its moving 
groups of sight-seers each in the hands of a guide. These 
one sees always and hears always : so much so that a re- 
minder has been printed and set up here and there in this 
church, to the effect that it is primarily the house of God 




< 

w 
W 

H 



O <: 



GHIRLANDAIO 299 

and for worshippers. But S. Maria Novella has not a tithe 
of S. Croce's treasures. Having almost no tombs of first 
importance, it has to rely upon its interior beauty and 
upon its frescoes, and its chief glory, whatever Mr. Ruskin, 
who hated them, might say, is, for most people, Ghirlan- 
daio's series of scenes in the life of the Virgin and S. John the 
Baptist. These cover the walls of the choir and for more 
than four centuries have given delight to Florentines and 
foreigners. Such was the thoroughness of their painter in 
his colour mixing (in which the boy Michelangelo assisted 
him) that, although they have sadly dimmed and require 
the best morning light, they should endure for centuries 
longer, a reminder not only of the thoughtful, sincere, in- 
teresting art of Ghirlandaio and of the pious generosity 
of the Tornabuoni family, who gave them, but also of the 
costumes and carriage of the Florentine ladies at the end 
of the fifteenth century when Lorenzo the Magnificent was 
in his zenith. Domenico Ghirlandaio may not be quite 
of the highest rank among the makers of Florence; but 
he comes very near it, and indeed, by reason of being Michel- 
angelo's first instructor, perhaps should stand amid them. 
But one thing is certain — that without him Florence would 
be the poorer by many beautiful works. 

He was born in 1449, twenty-one years after the death 
of Masaccio and three before Leonardo, twenty-six before 
Michelangelo, and thirty-four before Raphael. His full 
name was Domenico or Tommaso di Currado di Doffo 
Bigordi, but his father Tommaso Bigordi, a goldsmith, 
having hit upon a peculiarly attractive way of making 
garlands for the hair, was known as Ghirlandaio, the gar- 
land maker ; and time has effaced the Bigordi completely. 

The portraits of both Tommaso and Domenico, side by 
side, occur in the fresco representing Joachim driven from 



300 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

the Temple : Domenico, who is to be seen second from the 
extreme right, a little resembles our Charles II. Like 
his father, and, as we have seen, like most of the artists of 
Florence, he too became a goldsmith, and his love of 
the jewels that goldsmiths made may be traced in his 
pictures ; but at an early age he was sent to Alessio 
Baldovinetti to learn to be a painter. Alessio's work we 
find all over Florence : a Last Judgment in the Accademia, 
for example, but that is not a very pleasing thing ; 
a Madonna Enthroned, in the Uffizi ; the S. Miniato 
frescoes ; the S. Trinita frescoes ; and that extremely 
charming although faded work in the outer court of SS. 
Annunziata. For the most delightful picture from his 
hand, however, one has to go to the Louvre, where there is 
a Madonna and Child (1300 a), in the early Tuscan room, 
which has a charm not excelled by any such group that 
I know. The photographers still call it a Piero della 
Francesca, and the Louvre authorities omit to name it at 
all ; but it is Alessio beyond question. Next it hangs the 
best Ghirlandaio that I know — the very beautiful Visitation, 
and, to add to the interest of this room to the returning 
Florentine wanderer, on the same wall are two far more 
attractive works by Bastiano Mainardi (Ghirlandaio's 
brother-in-law and assistant at S. Maria Novella) than any 
in Florence. 

Alessio, who was born in 1427, was an open-handed 
ingenious man who could not only paint and do mosaic 
but once made a wonderful clock for Lorenzo. His experi- 
ments with colour were disastrous : hence most of his fres- 
coes have perished ; but possibly it was through Alessio's 
mistakes that Ghirlandaio acquired the use of such a last- 
ing medium. Alessio was an independent man who painted 
from taste and not necessity. 



GHIRLANDAIO 301 

Ghirlandaio's chief influences, however, were Masaccio, 
at the Carmine, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Verrocchio, who is 
thought also to have been Baldovinetti's pupil and whose 
Baptism of Christ, in the Accademia, painted when Ghirlan- 
daio was seventeen, must have given Ghirlandaio the lines 
for his own treatment of the incident in this church. One 
has also only to compare Yerrocchio's sculptured Madonnas 
in the Bargello with many of Ghirlandaio's to see the 
influence again ; both were attracted by a similar type of 
sweet, -easy-natured girl. 

When he was twenty-six Ghirlandaio went to Rome to 
paint the Sixtine library, and then to San Gimignano, 
where he was assisted by Mainardi, who was to remain his 
most valuable ally in executing the large commissions which 
were to come to his workshop. His earliest Florentine 
frescoes are those which we shall see at Ognissanti; the 
Madonna della Misericordia and the Deposition painted 
for the Vespucci] family and only recently discovered, 
together with the S. Jerome, in the church, and the Last 
Supper, in the refectory. By this time Ghirlandaio 
and Botticelli were in some sort of rivalry, although, so 
far as I know, friendly enough, and both went to Rome 
in 1481, together with Perugino, Piero di Cosimo, Cosimo 
Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and others, at the command of 
Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the Sixtine chapel, the excom- 
munication of all Florentines which the Pope had decreed 
after the failure of the Pazzi Conspiracy to destroy the 
Medici (as we saw in Chapter II) having been removed in 
order to get these excellent workmen to the Holy City. 
Painting very rapidly the little band had finished their 
work in six months, and Ghirlandaio was at home again 
with such an ambition and industry in him that he once 
expressed the wish that every inch of the walls of Florence 



302 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

might be covered by his brush — and in those days Florence 
had walls all round it, with twenty-odd towers in addition 
to the gates. His next great frescoes were those in the 
Palazzo Vecchio and S. Trinita. It was in 1485 that he 
painted his delightful Adoration at the Accademia, and 
in 1486 he began his great series at S. Maria Novella, 
finishing them in 1490, his assistants being his brother 
David, Benedetto Mainardi, who married Ghirlandaio's 
sister, and certain apprentices, among them the youthful 
Michelangelo, who came to the studio in 1488. 

The story of the frescoes is this. Ghirlandaio when in 
Rome had met Giovanni Tornabuoni, a wealthy merchant 
whose wife had died in childbirth. Her death we have 
already seen treated in relief by Verrocchio in the Bargello. 
Ghirlandaio was first asked to beautify in her honour the 
Minerva at Rome, where she was buried, and this he did. 
Later when Giovanni Tornabuoni wished to present S. Maria 
Novella with a handsome benefaction, he induced the Ricci 
family, who owned this chapel, to allow him to re-decorate 
it, and engaged Ghirlandaio for the task. This meant first 
covering the fast fading frescoes by Orcagna, which were 
already there, and then painting over them. What the 
Orcagnas were like we cannot know ; but the substitute, 
although probably it had less of curious genius in it, 
was undoubtedly more attractive to the ordinary ob- 
server. 

The right wall, as one faces the window (whose richness 
of coloured glass, although so fine in the church as a 
whole, is here such a privation), is occupied by scenes in the 
story of the Baptist; the left by the life of the Virgin. 
The left of the lowest pair on the right wall represents 
S. Mary and S. Elizabeth, and in it a party of Ghirlandaio's 
stately Florentine ladies watch the greeting of the two 



FAIR FLORENTINES 303 

saints outside Florence itself, symbolized rather than 
portrayed, very near the church in which we stand. 
The girl in yellow, on the right of the picture, with her 
handkerchief in her hand and wearing a rich dress, is Gio- 
vanna degli Albizzi, who married Lorenzo Tornabuoni at the 
Villa Lemmi near Florence, that villa from which Botticelli's 
exquisite fresco, now in the Louvre at the top of the main 
staircase, in which she again is to be seen, was taken. Her 
life was a sad one, for her husband was one of those who 
conspired with Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici for his return 
some ten years later, and was beheaded. S. Elizabeth is 
of course the older woman. The companion to this pic- 
ture represents the angel appearing to S. Zacharias, and 
here again Ghirlandaio gives us contemporary Florentines, 
portraits of distinguished Tornabuoni men and certain 
friends of eminence among them. In the little group low 
down on the left, for example, are Poliziano and Marsilio 
Ficino, the Platonist. Above — but seeing is beginning to 
be difficult — the pair of frescoes represent, on the right, the 
birth of the Baptist, and on the left, his naming. The 
birth scene has much beauty, and is as well composed as 
any, and there is a girl in it of superb grace and nobility ; 
but the birth scene of the Virgin, on the opposite wall, is 
perhaps the finer and certainly more easily seen. In the 
naming of the child we find Medici portraits once more, 
that family being related to the Tornabuoni; and Mr. 
Davies, in his book on Ghirlandaio, offers the interesting 
suggestion, which he supports very reasonably, that the 
painter has made the incident refer to the naming of 
Lorenzo de' Medici's third son, Giovanni (or John), who 
afterwards became Pope Leo X. In that case the man on 
the left, in green, with his hand on his hip, would be 
Lorenzo himself, whom he certainly resembles. Who the 



304 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

sponsor is not known. The landscape and architecture 
are alike charming. 

Above these we faintly see that strange Baptism of Christ, 
so curiously like the Verrocchio in the Accademia, and the 
Baptist preaching. 

The left wall is perhaps the favourite. We begin with 
Joachim being driven from the Temple, one of the lowest 
pair; and this has a peculiar interest in giving us a por- 
trait of the painter and his associates — the figure on the 
extreme right being Benedetto Mainardi ; then Domenico 
Ghirlandaio ; then his father ; and lastly his brother David. 
On the opposite side of the picture is the fated Lorenzo 
Tornabuoni, of whom I have spoken above, the figure 
farthest from the edge, with his hand on his hip. The 
companion picture is the most popular of all — the Birth of 
the Virgin — certainly one of the most charming interiors 
in Florence. Here again we have portraits — no doubt 
Tornabuoni ladies — and much pleasant fancy on the part 
of the painter, who made everything as beautiful as he 
could, totally unmindful of the probabilities. Ruskin is 
angry with him for neglecting to show the splashing of the 
water in the vessel, but it would be quite possible for no 
splashing to be visible, especially if the pouring had only 
just begun; but for Ruskin' s strictures you must go to 
" Mornings in Florence," where poor Ghirlandaio gets a lash 
for every virtue of Giotto. Next — above, on the left — we 
have the Presentation of the Virgin, and on the right her 
Marriage. The Presentation is considered by Mr. Davies 
to be almost wholly the work of Ghirlandaio's assistants, 
while the youthful Michelangelo himself has been credited 
with the half-naked figure on the steps, although Mr. 
Davies gives it to Mainardi. Mainardi again is probably 
the author of the companion scene. The remaining fres- 



CIMABUE'S MADONNA 305 

coes are of less interest and much damaged; but in the 
window wall one should notice the portraits of Giovanni 
Tornabuoni and Francesca di Luca Pitti, his wife, kneeling, 
because this Giovanni was the donor of the frescoes, and his 
sister Lucrezia was the wife of Piero de' Medici and there- 
fore the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, while Fran- 
cesca Tornabuoni, the poor lady who died in childbirth, 
was the daughter of that proud Florentine who began the 
Pitti palace but ended his life in disgrace. 

And -so we leave this beautiful recess, where pure re- 
ligious feeling may perhaps be wanting but where the best 
spirit of the Renaissance is to be found : everything mak- 
ing for harmony and pleasure ; and on returning to London 
the visitor should make a point of seeing the Florentine 
girl by the same hand in our National Gallery, No. 1230, 
for she is very typical of his genius. 

On the entrance wall of the church is what must once 
have been a fine Masaccio — ' ' The Trinity ' ' — but it is in very 
bad condition ; while in the Cappella Rucellai in the right 
transept is what purports to be a Cimabue, very like the 
one in the Accademia, but with a rather more matured 
Child in it. Vasari tells us that on its completion this 
picture was carried in stately procession from the painter's 
studio to the church, in great rejoicing and blowing of 
trumpets, the populace being moved not only by religious 
ecstasy, but by pride in an artist who could make such a 
beautiful and spacious painting, the largest then known. 
Vasari adds that when Cimabue was at work upon it, 
Charles of Anjou, visiting Florence, was taken to his studio, 
to see the wonderful painter, and a number of Florentines 
entering too, they broke out into such rejoicings that the 
locality was known ever after as Borgo Allegro or Joyful 
Quarter. This would be about 1290. There was a cer- 
s 



306 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

tain fitness in Cimabue painting this Madonna, for it is 
said that he had his education in the convent which stood 
here before the present church was begun. But I should 
add that of Cimabue we know practically nothing, and that 
most of Vasari's statements have been confuted, while the 
painter of the S. Maria Novella Madonna is held by some 
authorities to be Duccio of Siena. So where are we ? 

The little chapel next the choir on the right is that of 
Filippo Strozzi the elder who was one of the witnesses of 
the Pazzi outrage in the Duomo in 1478. This was the 
Filippo Strozzi who began the Strozzi palace in 1489, 
father of the Filippo Strozzi who married Lorenzo de' 
Medici's noble grand-daughter Clarice and came to a tragic 
end under Cosimo I. Old Filippo's tomb here was designed 
by Benedetto da Maiano, who made the famous Franciscan 
pulpit in S. Croce, and was Ghirlandaio's friend and the 
Strozzi palace's first architect. The beautiful circular relief 
of the Virgin and Child, with a border of roses and flying wor- 
shipping angels all about it, behind the altar, is Benedetto's 
too, and very lovely and human are both Mother and Child. 

The frescoes in this chapel, by Filippino Lippi, are in- 
teresting, particularly that one on the left, depicting the 
Resuscitation of Drusiana by S. John the Evangelist, at 
Rome, in which the group of women and children on the 
right, with the little dog, is full of life and most naturally 
done. Above (but almost impossible to see) is S. John in 
his cauldron of boiling oil between Roman soldiers and 
the denouncing Emperor, under the banner S.P.Q.R. — a 
work in which Roman local colour completely excludes re- 
ligious feeling. Opposite, below, we see S. Philip exorcis- 
ing a dragon, a very florid scene, and, above, a painfully 
spirited and realistic representation of the Crucifixion. 
The sweetness of the figures of Charity and Faith in mono- 




THE BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN 

FROM THE FRESCO BY GH1RXANDAIO IN S. MARIA NOVELLA 



ORCAGNA AGAIN 307 

chrome and gold helps, with Benedetto's tondo, to engentle 
the air. 

We then come again to the Choir, with Ghirlandaio's 
urbane Florentine pageant in the guise of sacred history, 
and pass on to the next chapel, the Cappella Gondi, where 
that crucifix in wood is to be seen which Brunelleschi carved 
as a lesson to Donatello,who received it like the gentleman 
he was. I have told the story in Chapter XV. 

The left transept ends in the chapel of the Strozzi family, 
of which Filippo was the head in his day, and here we find 
Andrea Orcagna and his brother's fresco of Heaven, the 
Last Judgment and Hell. It was the two Orcagnas who, 
according to Vasari, had covered the Choir with those 
scenes in the life of the Virgin which Ghirlandaio was 
allowed to paint over, and Vasari adds that the later artist 
availed himself of many of the ideas of his predecessors. 
This, however, is not very likely, I think, except perhaps in 
choice of subject. Orcagna, like Giotto, and later, Michel- 
angelo, was a student of Dante, and the Strozzi Chapel 
frescoes follow the poet's descriptions. In the Last Judg- 
ment, Dante himself is to be seen, among the elect, in the 
attitude of prayer. Petrarch is with him. 

The sacristy is by Talenti (of the Campanile) and was 
added in 1350. Among its treasures once were the three 
reliquaries painted by Fra Angelico, but they are now at 
S. Marco. It has still rich vestments, fine woodwork, 
and a gay and elaborate lavabo by one of the della Rob- 
bias, with its wealth of ornament and colour and its 
charming Madonna and Child with angels. 

A little doorway close by used to lead to the cloisters, 
and a mercenary sacristan was never far distant, only too 
ready to unlock for a fee what should never have been 
locked, and black with fury if he got nothing. But all this 



308 S. MARIA NOVELLA 

has now been done away with, and the entrance to the 
cloisters is from the Piazza, just to the left of the church, and 
there is a turnstile and a fee of fifty centimes. At S. Lorenzo 
the cloisters are free. At the Carmine and the Annunziata 
the cloisters are free. At S. Croce the charge is a lira and 
at S. Maria Novella half a lira. To make a charge for the 
cloisters alone seems to me utterly wicked. Let the Pazzi 
Chapel at S. Croce and the Spanish Chapel here have fees, 
if you like; but the cloisters should be open to all. 
Children should be encouraged to play there. 

Since, however, S. Maria Novella imposes a fee we must 
pay it, and the new arrangement at any rate carries this 
advantage with it, that one knows what one is expected to 
pay and can count on entrance. 

The cloisters are everywhere interesting to loiter in, but 
their chief fame is derived from the Spanish Chapel, which 
gained that name when in 1566 it was put at the disposal 
of Eleanor of Toledo's suite on the occasion of her marriage 
to Cosimo I. Nothing Spanish about it otherwise. Both 
structure and frescoes belong to the fourteenth century. 
Of these frescoes, which are of historical and human interest 
rather than artistically beautiful, that one on the right 
wall as we enter is the most famous. It is a pictorial glori- 
fication of the Dominican order triumphant ; with a vivid 
reminder of the origin of the word Dominican in the episode 
of the wolves (or heretics) being attacked by black and 
white dogs, the Canes Domini, or hounds of the Lord. The 
" Mornings in Florence " should here be consulted again, 
for Ruskin made a very thorough and characteristically de- 
cisive analysis of these paintings, which, whether one agrees 
with it or not, is profoundly interesting. Poor old Vasari, 
who so patiently described them too and named a number 
of the originals of the portraits, is now shelved, and from 



THOMAS AQUINAS 309 

both his artists, Simone Martini and Taddeo Gaddi, has 
the authorship been taken by modern experts. Some one, 
however, must have done the work. The Duomo as repre- 
sented here is not the Duomo of fact, which had not then 
its dome, but of anticipation. 

Opposite, we see a representation of the triumph of the 
greatest of the Dominicans, after its founder, S. Thomas 
Aquinas, the author of the " Summa Theologian," who 
died in 1274. The painter shows the Angelic Doctor en- 
throned amid saints and patriarchs and heavenly attend- 
ants, while three powerful heretics grovel at his feet, and 
beneath are the Sciences and Moral Qualities and certain 
distinguished men who served them conspicuously, such as 
Aristotle, the logician, whom S. Thomas Aquinas edited, 
and Cicero, the rhetorician. In real life Aquinas was so 
modest and retiring that he would accept no exalted post 
from the Church, but remained closeted with his books 
and scholars ; and we can conceive what his horror would 
be could he view this apotheosis. On the ceiling is a quaint 
rendering of the walking on the water, S. Peter's failure 
being watched from the ship with the utmost closeness by 
the other disciples, but attracting no notice whatever from 
an angler, close by, on the shore. The chapel is desolate 
and unkempt, and those of us who are not Dominicans 
are not sorry to leave it and look for the simple sweetness 
of the Giottos. 

These are to be found, with some difficulty, on the walls 
of the niche where the tomb of theMarchese Ridolfo stands. 
They are certainly very simple and telling, and I advise every 
one to open the " Mornings in Florence " and learn how the 
wilful magical pen deals with them ; but it would be a pity 
to give up Ghirlandaio because Giotto was so different, 
as Ruskin wished. Room for both. One scene represents 



310 S. MAMA NOVELLA 

the meeting of S. Joachim and S. Anna outside a mediaeval 
city's walls, and it has some pretty Giottesque touches, 
such as the man carrying doves to the Temple and the 
angel uniting the two saints in friendliness ; and the other 
is the Birth of the Virgin, which Ruskin was so pleased to 
pit against Ghirlandaio's treatment of the same incident. 
Well, it is given to some of us to see only what we want to 
see and be blind to the rest ; and Ruskin was of these the 
very king. I agree with him that Ghirlandaio in both his 
Nativity frescoes thought little of the exhaustion of the 
mothers ; but it is arguable that two such accouchements 
might with propriety be treated as abnormal — '■ as indeed 
every painter has treated the birth of Christ, where the 
Virgin, fully dressed, is receiving the Magi a few moments 
after. Ruskin, after making his deadly comparisons, con- 
cludes thus genially of the Giotto version — " If you can be 
pleased with this, you can see Florence. But if not, by all 
means amuse yourself there, if you can find it amusing, as 
long as you like ; you can never see it." 

The S. Maria Novella habit is one to be quickly con- 
tracted by the visitor to Florence : nearly as important as 
the S. Croce habit. Both churches are hospitable and, apart 
from the cloisters, free and eminently suited for dallying 
in ; thus differing from the Duomo, which is dark, and S. 
Lorenzo, where there are payments to be made and attend- 
ants to discourage. 

An effort should be made at S. Maria Novella to get into 
the old cloisters, which are very large and indicate what a 
vast convent it once was. But there is no certainty. The 
way is to go through to the Palaestra and hope for the 
best. Here, as I have said in the second chapter, were 
lodged Pope Eugenius and his suite, when they came to the 
Council of Florence in 1 439 . These large and beautiful green 



DOMINICAN DRUGS 311 

cloisters are now deserted. Through certain windows on 
the left one may see chemists at work compounding drugs 
and perfumes after old Dominican recipes, to be sold at the 
Farmacia in the Via della Scala close by. The great refec- 
tory has been turned into a gymnasium. 

The two obelisks, supported by tortoises and surmounted 
by beautiful lilies, in the Piazza of S. Maria Novella were 
used as boundaries in the chariot races held here under 
Cosimo I, and in the collection of old Florentine prints 
on the top floor of Michelangelo's house you may see repre- 
sentations of these races. The charming loggia opposite S. 
Maria Novella, with della Robbia decorations, is the Loggia 
di S. Paolo, a school designed, it is thought, by Brunelleschi, 
and here, at the right hand end, we see S. Dominic him- 
self in & friendly embrace with S. Francis, a very beautiful 
group by either Luca or Andrea della Robbia. 

In the loggia cabmen now wrangle all day and all night. 
From it S. Maria Novella is seen under the best conditions, 
always cheerful and serene ; while far behind the church is 
the huge Apennine where most of the weather of Florence 
seems to be manufactured. In mid April this year (1912) 
it still had its cap of snow. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE TO S. TRINITA 

A city of trams — The old market — Donatello's figure of Abundance — 
An evening resort — A hall of variety — Florentines of to-day — The war 
with Turkey — Homecoming heroes — Restaurants — The new market — 
The bronze boar — A fifteenth century palace — Old Florentine life re- 
constructed — Where changes are few — S. Trinita — Ghirlandaio again. 
— S. Francis — The Strozzi palace — Clarice de' Medici. 

FLORENCE is not simple to the stranger. Like all 
very old cities built fortuitously it is difficult to 
learn : the points of the compass are elusive ; the streets 
are so narrow that the sky is no constant guide; the 
names of the streets are often not there ; the policemen 
have no high standard of helpfulness. There are trams, it 
is true — too many and too noisy, and too near the pavement 
— but the names of their outward destinations, from the 
centre, too rarely correspond to any point of interest that 
one is desiring. Hence one has many embarrassments and 
even annoyances. Yet I daresay this is best : an orderly 
Florence is unthinkable. Since, however, the trams that 
are returning to the centre nearly all go to the Duomo, 
either passing it or stopping there, the tram becomes one's 
best friend and the Duomo one's starting point for most 
excursions. 

Supposing ourselves to be there once more, let us quickly 
get through the horrid necessity, which confronts one in 
all ancient Italian cities, of seeing the Piazza Vittorio Em- 

312 



THE OLD MARKET 313 

manuele. In an earlier chapter we left the Baptistery and 
walked along the Via Calzaioli. Again starting from the 
Baptistery let us take the Via dell' Arcivescovado, which 
is parallel with the Via Calzaioli, on the right of it, and 
again walk straight forward. We shall come almost at 
once to the great modern square. 

No Italian city or town is complete without a Piazza 
Vittorio Emmanuele and a statue of that monarch. In 
Florence the sturdy king bestrides his horse here. Italy 
being sO old and Vittorio Emmanuele so new, it follows in 
most cases that the square or street named after him sup- 
plants an older one, and if the Italians had any memory 
or imaginative interest in history they would see to it that 
the old name was not wholly obliterated. In Florence, in 
order to honour the first king of United Italy, much grave 
violence was done to antiquity, for a very picturesque 
quarter had to be cleared away for the huge brasseries, 
stores and hotels which make up the west side; which 
in their turn marked the site of the old market where 
Donatello and Brunelleschi and all the later artists of the 
great days did their shopping and met to exchange ideals 
and banter ; and that market in its turn marked the site 
of the Roman forum. 

One of the features of the old market was the charming 
Loggia di Pesce ; another, Donatello's figure of Abundance, 
surmounting a column. This figure is now in the museum 
of ancient city relics in the monastery of S. Marco, where 
one confronts her on a level instead of looking up at her 
in mid sky. But she is very good, none the less. 

In talking to elderly persons who can remember Florence 
forty and fifty years ago I find that nothing so distresses 
them as the loss of the old quarter for the making of this 
new spacious piazza ; and probably nothing can so delight 



314 THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE 

the younger Florentines as its possession, for, having noth- 
ing to do in' the evenings, they do it chiefly in the Piazza 
Vittorio Emmanuele. Chairs and tables spring up like 
mushrooms in the roadway, among which too few waiters 
distribute those very inexpensive refreshments which seem 
to be purchased rather for the right to the seat that they 
confer than for any stimulation. It is extraordinary to the 
eyes of the thriftless English, who are never so happy as 
when they are overpaying Italian and other caterers in 
their own country, to notice how long these wiser folk will 
occupy a table on an expenditure of fourpence. 

I do not mean that there are no theatres in Florence. 
There are many, but they are not very good; and the 
young men can do without them. Curious old theatres, 
faded and artificial, all apparently built for the comedies 
of Goldoni. There are cinema theatres too, at prices 
which would delight the English public addicted to 
those insidious entertainments, but horrify English mana- 
gers ; and the Teatro Salvini at the back of the Palazzo 
Vecchio is occasionally transformed into a Folies Bergeres 
(as it is called) where one after another comediennes 
sing each two or three songs rapidly to an audience 
who regard them with apathy and converse without 
ceasing. The only sign of interest which one observes is 
the murmur which follows anything a little off the beaten 
track — a sound that might equally be encouragement or 
disapproval. But a really pretty woman entering a box 
moves them. Then they employ every note in the gamut ; 
and curiously enough the pretty woman in the box is usu- 
ally as cool under the fusillade as a professional and har- 
dened sister would be. A strange music hall this to the 
English eye, where the orchestra smokes, and no numbers 
are put up, and every one talks, and the intervals seem to 




MADONNA DEL GRANDUCA 

BY RAPHAEL IN THE PtTII 



THE FLORENTINES 315 

be hours long. But the Florentines do not mind, for they 
have not the English thirst for entertainment and escape ; 
they carry their entertainment with them and do not wish 
to escape — going to such places only because they are 
warmer than out of doors. 

Sitting here and watching their ironical negligence of the 
stage and their interest in each other's company; their 
animated talk and rapid decisions as to the merits and 
charms of a performer ; the comfort of their attitudes and 
carelessness (although never quite slovenliness) in dress ; 
one seems to realize the nation better than anywhere. The 
old fighting passion may have gone ; but much of the quick- 
ness, the shrewdness and the humour remains, together 
with the determination of each man to have if possible his 
own way and, whether possible or not, his own say. 

Seeing them in great numbers one quickly learns and 
steadily corroborates the fact that the Florentines are not 
beautiful. A pretty woman or a handsome man is a 
rarity ; but a dull-looking man or woman is equally rare. 
They are shrewd, philosophic, cynical, and very ready for 
•laughter. They look contented also : Florence clearly is 
the best place to be born in, to live in, and to die in. Let all 
the world come to Florence, by all means, and spend its 
money there ; but don't ask Florence to go to the world. 
Don't in fact ask Florence to do anything very much. 

Civilization and modern conditions have done the 
Florentines no good. Their destiny was to live in a walled 
city in turbulent days, when the foe came against it, or 
tyranny threatened from within and had to be resisted. 
They were then Florentines and everything mattered. To- 
day they are Italians and nothing matters very much. 
Moreover, it must be galling to have somewhere in the 
recesses of their consciousness the knowledge that their 



316 THE PIAZZA VITTORXO EMMANUELE 

famous city, built and cemented with their ancestors' blood, 
is now only a museum. 

When it is fine and warm the music hall does not exist, 
and it is in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele that the Floren- 
tines sit and talk, or walk and talk, or listen to the band 
which periodically inhabits a stand near the centre; and 
it was here that I watched the reception of the news that 
Italy had declared war on Turkey, a decision which while 
it rejoiced the national warlike spirit of the populace 
could not but carry with it a reminder that wars have to 
be paid for. Six or seven months later I saw the return 
to Florence of the first troops from the war, and their re- 
ception was terrific. In the mass they were welcome 
enough ; but as soon as units could be separated from the 
mass the fun began, for they were carried shoulder high to 
whatever destination they wanted, their knapsacks and 
rifles falling to proud bearers too ; while the women clapped 
from the upper windows, the shrewd shopkeepers cheered 
from their doorways, and the crowd which followed and sur- 
rounded the hero every moment increased. As for the 
heroes, they looked for the most part a good deal less foolish 
than Englishmen would have done; but here and there 
was one whose expression suggested that the Turks were 
nothing to this. One poor fellow had his coat dragged 
from his back and torn into a thousand souvenirs. 

The restaurants of Florence are those of a city where the 
natives are thrifty and the visitors dine in hotels. There 
is one expensive high-class house, in the Via Tornabuoni — 
Doney e Nipoti or Doney et Neveux — where the cooking is 
Franco-Italian and the Chianti and wines are dear beyond 
belief, and the venerable waiters move with a deliberation 
which can drive a hungry man — and one is always hungry 
in this fine Tuscan air — to despair. I like better the ex- 



"CAMERIERE!" 317 

cellent old-fashioned purely Italian food and Chianti and 
speed at Bonciani's in the Via de' Panzani, close to the 
station. These twain are the best. But it is more interest- 
ing to go to the huge Gambrinus in the Piazza Vittorio 
Emmanuele, because so much is going on all the time. One 
curious Florentine habit is quickly discovered and resented 
by the stranger who frequents a restaurant, and that is 
the system of changing waiters from one set of tables to 
another; so that whereas in London and Paris the wise 
diner is true to a corner because it carries the same service 
with it, in Florence he must follow the service. But if the 
restaurants have odd ways, and a limited range of dishes 
and those not very interesting, they make up for it by being 
astonishingly quick. Things are cooked almost miracu- 
lously. 

The Florentines eat little. But greediness is not an 
Italian fault. No greedy people would have a five- 
syllabled word for a waiter. 

Continuing along the Via dell' Arcivescovado, which 
after the Piazza becomes the Via Celimana, we come to that 
very beautiful structure the Mercato Nuovo, which, how- 
ever, is not so wonderfully new, having been built as long 
ago as 1547-1551. Its columns and arched roof are ex- 
quisitely proportioned. As a market it seems to be a poor 
affair, the chief commodity being straw hats. For the 
principal food market one has to go to the Via d' Ariento, 
near S. Lorenzo, and this is, I think, well worth doing 
early in the morning. Lovers of Hans Andersen go to 
the Mercato Nuovo to see the famous bronze boar (or 
"metal pig," as it was called in the translation on which I 
was brought up) that stands here, on whose back the little 
street boy had such adventures. The boar himself was the 
work of Pietro Tacca (1586-1650), a copy from an ancient 



318 THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE 

marble original, now in the Uffizi, at the top" of the 
entrance stairs; but the pedestal with its collection of 
creeping things is modern. The Florentines who stand in 
the market niches are Bernardo Cennini, a goldsmith and 
one of Ghiberti's assistants, who introduced printing into 
Florence in 1471 and began with an edition of Virgil ; Gio- 
vanni Villani, who was the city's first serious historian, be- 
ginning in 1300 and continuing till his death in 1348 ; and 
Michele Lando, the wool-carder, who on July 22nd, 1378, at 
the head of a mob, overturned the power of the Signory. 

By continuing straight on we should come to that 
crowded and fussy little street which crosses the river by 
the Ponte Vecchio and eventually becomes the Roman 
way ; but let us instead turn to the right this side of the 
market, down the Via Porta Rossa, because here is the 
Palazzo Davanzati, which has a profound interest to lovers 
of the Florentine past in that it has been restored exactly 
to its ancient state when Pope Eugenius IV lodged here, 
and has been filled with fourteenth and fifteenth century 
furniture. In those days it was the home of the Davizza 
family. The Davanzati bought it late in the sixteenth 
century and retained it until 1838. In 1904 it was bought 
by Professor Elia Volpi, who restored its ancient conditions 
and presented it to the city as a permanent monument of 
the past. 

Here we see a mediaeval Florentine palace precisely as 
it was when its Florentine owner lived his uncomfortable 
life there. For say what one may, there is no question that 
life must have been uncomfortable. In early and late 
summer, when the weather was fine and warm, these stone 
floors and continuous draughts may have been solacing; 
but in winter and early spring, when Florentine weather 
can be so bitterly hostile, what then ? That there was a, 



AN ANCIENT HOME 319 

big fire we know by the smoky condition of Michelozzo's 
charming frieze on the chimney piece; but the room — I 
refer to that on the first floor — is so vast that this fire can 
have done little for anyone but an immediate vis-a-vis; 
and the room, moreover, was between the open world on 
the one side, and the open court (now roofed in with glass) 
on the other, with such additional opportunities for draughts 
as the four trap-doors in the floor offered. It was through 
these traps that the stone cannon-balls still stacked in the 
window- seats were dropped, or a few gallons of boiling oil 
poured, whenever the city or a faction of it turned against 
the householder. Not comfortable, you see, at least not in 
our northern sense of the word, although to the hardy 
frugal Florentine it may have seemed a haven of luxury. 

The furniture of the salon is simple and sparse and very 
hard. A bust here, a picture there, a coloured plate, a 
crucifix, and a Madonna and Child in a niche : that was 
all the decoration save tapestry. An hour glass, a pepper 
mill, a compass, an inkstand, stand for utility, and quaint 
and twisted musical instruments and a backgammon board 
for beguilement. 

In the salle-a-manger adjoining is less light, and here 
also is a symbol of Florentine unrest in the shape of a hole 
in the wall (beneath the niche which holds the Madonna 
and Child) through which the advancing foe, who had 
successfully avoided the cannon-balls and the oil, might be 
prodded with lances, or even fired at. The next room is 
the kitchen, curiously far from the well, the opening to 
which is in the salon, and then a bedroom (with some guns 
in it) and smaller rooms gained from the central court. 

The rest of the building is the same — a series of self- 
contained flats, but all dipping for water from the same 
shaft and all depending anxiously upon the success of the 



320 THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE 

first floor with invaders. At the top is a beautiful loggia 
with Florence beneath it. 

The odd thing to remember is that for the poor of 
Florence, who now inhabit houses of the same age as the 
Davanzati palace, the conditions are almost as they were 
in the fifteenth century. A few changes have come in, 
but hardly any. Myriads of the tenements have no water 
laid on : it must still be pulled up in buckets exactly as 
here. Indeed you may often see the top floor at work in 
this way ; and there is a row of houses on the left of the 
road to the Certosa, a little way out of Florence, with 
a most elaborate network of bucket ropes over many 
gardens to one well. Similarly one sees the occupants of 
the higher floors drawing vegetables and bread in baskets 
from the street and lowering the money for them. The 
postman delivers letters in this way, too. Again, one of 
the survivals of the Davanzati to which the custodian draws 
attention is the rain-water pipe, like a long bamboo, down 
the wall of the court ; but one has but to walk along the 
Via Lambertesca, between the Ufnzi and the Via For S. 
Maria, and peer into the alleys, to see that these pipes are 
common enough yet. 

In fact, directly one leaves the big streets Florence is 
still fifteenth century. Less colour in the costumes, and 
a few anachronisms, such as gas or electric light, posters, 
newspapers, cigarettes, and bicycles, which dart like dragon 
flies (every Florentine cyclist being a trick cyclist) ; but 
for the rest there is no change. The business of life has 
not altered ; the same food is eaten, the same vessels con- 
tain it, the same fire cooks it, the same red wine is made 
from the same grapes in the same vineyards, the same 
language (almost) is spoken. The babies are christened 
at the same font, the parents visit the same churches. 




THE PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA OX A WET FRIDAY AFTERNOON 



SURVIVALS 321 

Similarly the handicrafts can have altered little. The 
coppersmith, the blacksmith, the cobbler, the woodcarver, 
the goldsmiths in their yellow smocks, must be just as they 
were, and certainly the cellars and caverns under the big 
houses in which they work have not changed. Where the 
change is, is among the better to do, the rich, and in the 
government. For no longer is a man afraid to talk freely 
of politics; no longer does he shudder as he passes the 
Bargello; no longer is the name of Medici on his lips. 
Everything else is practically as it was. 

The Via Porta Rossa runs to the Piazza S. Trinita, the 
church of S. Trinita being our destination. For here are 
some interesting frescoes. First, however, let us look at 
the sculpture : a very beautiful altar by Benedetto da 
Rovezzano in the fifth chapel of the right aisle ; a monu- 
ment by Luca delta Robbia to one of the archbishops of 
Fiesole, once in S. Pancrazio (which is now a tobacco factory) 
in the Via della Spada and brought here for safe keeping — 
a beautiful example of Luca's genius, not only as a modeller 
but also as a very treasury of pretty thoughts, for the 
border of flowers and leaves is beyond praise delightful. 
The best green in Florence (after Nature's, which is seen 
through so many doorways and which splashes over so 
many white walls and mingles with gay fruits in so many 
shops) is here. 

In the fifth chapel of the left aisle is a Magdalen carved 
in wood by Desiderio da Settignano and finished by Bene- 
detto da Maiano ; while S. Trinita now possesses, but shows 
only on Good Friday, the very crucifix from S. Miniato 
which bowed down and blessed S . Gualberto . The porphyry 
tombs of the Sassetti, in the chapel of that family, by 
Giuliano di Sangallo, are magnificent. 

It is in the Sassetti chapel that we find the Ghirlandaio 



322 THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE 

frescoes of scenes in the life of S. Francis which bring so 
many strangers to this church. The painting which de- 
picts S. Francis receiving the charter from the Emperor 
Honorius is interesting both for its history and its paint- 
ing ; for it contains a valuable record of what the Palazzo 
Vecchio and Loggia de' Lanzi were like in 1485, and also 
many portraits : among them Lorenzo the Magnificent, on 
the extreme right holding out his hand; Poliziano, tutor 
of the Medici boys, coming first up the stairs ; and on the 
extreme left very probably Verrocchio, one of Ghirlandaio's 
favourite painters. We find old Florence again in the very 
attractive picture of the resuscitation of the nice little girl 
in violet, a daughter of the Spini family, who fell from a 
window of the Spini palace (as we see in the distance on the 
left, this being one of the old synchronized scenes) and was 
brought to life by S. Francis, who chanced to be flying by. 
The scene is intensely local: just outside the church, 
looking along what is now the Piazza S. Trinita and the 
old Trinita bridge. The Spini palace is still there, but is 
now called the Ferroni, and it accommodates no longer 
Florentine aristocrats but consuls and bank clerks. Among 
the portraits in the fresco are noble friends of the Spini 
family — Albrizzi, Acciaioli, Strozzi, and so forth. The 
little girl is very quaint and perfectly ready to take up 
once more the threads of her life. How long she lived 
this second time and what became of her I have not been 
able to discover. Her tiny sister, behind the bier, is even 
quainter. On the left is a little group of the comely 
Florentine ladies in whom Ghirlandaio so delighted, tall 
and serene, with a few youths among them. 

It is interesting to note that Ghirlandaio in his S. Trinita 
frescoes and Benedetto da Maiano in his S. Croce pulpit 
reliefs chose exactly the same scenes in the life of S. Francis : 



GHIRLANDAIO ONCE MORE 323 

interesting because when Ghirlandaio was painting frescoes 
at San Gimignano in 1475, Benedetto was at work on the 
altar for the same church of S. Fina, and they were friends. 
Where Ghirlandaio and Giotto, also in S. Croce, also co- 
incide in choice of subject some interesting comparisons 
may be made, all to the advantage of Giotto in spiritual 
feeling and unsophisticated charm, but by no means to 
Ghirlandaio's detriment as a fascinating historian in colour. 
In the scene of the death of S. Francis we find Ghir- 
landaio" and Giotto again on the same ground, and here it 
is probable that the later painter went to the earlier for 
inspiration ; for he has followed Giotto in the fine thought 
that makes one of the attendant brothers glance up as 
though at the saint's ascending spirit. It is remarkable 
how, with every picture that one sees, Giotto's complete- 
ness of equipment as a religious painter becomes more 
marked. His hand may have been ignorant of many 
masterly devices for which the time was not ripe ; but his 
head and heart knew all. 

The patriarchs in the spandrels of the choir are by Ghir- 
landaio's master, Alessio Baldovinetti, of whom I said some- 
thing in the chapter on S. Maria Novella. They once 
more testify to this painter's charm and brilliance. Almost 
more than that of any other does one regret the scarcity 
of his work. It was fitting that he should have painted 
the choir, for his name-saint, S. Alessio, guards the fagade 
of the church. 

The column opposite the church came from the baths of 
Caracalla and was set up by Cosimo I, upon the attain- 
ment of his life-long ambition of a grand-dukeship and a 
crown. The figure at the top is Justice. 

S. Trinita is a good starting-point for the leisurely ex- 
amination of the older and narrower streets, an occupation 



SU THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE 

which so many visitors to Florence prefer to the study of 
picture galleries and churches. And perhaps rightly. In 
no city can they carry on their researches with such ease, 
for Florence is incurious about them. Either the Floren- 
tines are too much engrossed in their own affairs or the 
peering foreigner has become too familiar an object to 
merit notice, but one may drift about even in the narrowest 
alleys beside the Arno, east and west, and attract few eyes. 
And the city here is at its most romantic : between the 
Piazza S. Trinita and the Via Por S. Maria, all about the 
Borgo SS. Apostoli. 

We have just been discussing Benedetto da Maiano 
the sculptor. If we turn to the left on leaving S. Trinita, 
instead of losing ourselves in the little streets, we are in the 
Via Tornabuoni, where the best shops are and American is 
the prevailing language. We shall soon come, on the right, 
to an example of Benedetto's work as an architect, for the 
first draft of the famous Palazzo Strozzi, the four-square 
fortress-home which Filippo Strozzi began for himself 
in 1489, was his. Benedetto continued the work until his 
death in 1507, when Cronaca, who built the great hall in 
the Palazzo Vecchio, took it over and added the famous cor- 
nice. The iron lantern and other smith work were by Lo- 
renzo the Magnificent's sardonic friend, " II Caparro,"of the 
Sign of the Burning Books, of whom I wrote in the chapter 
on the Medici palace. 

The first mistress of the Strozzi palace was Clarice 
Strozzi, nee Clarice de' Medici, the daughter of Piero, son 
of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She was born in 1493 and 
married Filippo Strozzi the younger in 1508, during the 
family's second period of exile. They then lived at Rome, 
but were allowed to return to Florence in 1510. Clarice's 
chief title to fame is her proud outburst when she turned 



THE STROZZI 325 

Ippolito and Alessandro out of the Medici palace. She 
died in 1528 and was buried in S. Maria Novella. The 
unfortunate Filippo met his end nine years later in the 
Boboli fortezza, which his money had helped to build and 
in which he was imprisoned for his share in a conspiracy 
against Cosimo I. Cosimo confiscated the palace and all 
Strozzi's other possessions, but later made some restitution. 
To-day the family occupy the upper part of their famous 
imperishable home, and beneath there is an exhibition of 
pictures and antiquities for sale. No private individual, 
whatever his wealth or ambition, will probably ever again 
succeed in building a house half so strong or noble as this. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE PITTI 

Luca Pitti's pride — Preliminary caution — A terrace view — A collec- 
tion but not a gallery — The personally-conducted — Giorgione the su- 
perb — Sustermans — The "Madonna del Granduca" — The "Madonna 
della Sedia" — From Cimabue to Raphael — Andrea del Sarto — Two 
Popes and a bastard — The ill-fated Ippolito — The National Gallery — 
Royal apartments — " Pallas subduing the Centaur " — The Boboli 

Gardens. 

THE Pitti approached from the Via Guicciardini is far 
liker a prison than a palace. It was commissioned 
by Luca Pitti, one of the proudest and richest of the 
rivals of the Medici, in 1441. Cosimo de' Medici, as we 
have seen, had rejected Brunelleschi's plans for a palazzo 
as being too pretentious and gone instead to his friend 
Michelozzo for something that externally at any rate was 
more modest; Pitti, whose one ambition was to exceed 
Cosimo in power, popularity, and visible wealth, deliber- 
ately chose Brunelleschi, and gave him carte blanche 
to make the most magnificent mansion possible. Pitti, 
however, plotting against Cosimo's son Piero, was frustrated 
and condemned to death; and although Piero obtained 
his pardon he lost all his friends and passed into utter dis- 
respect in the city. Meanwhile his palace remained un- 
finished and neglected, and continued so for a century, 
when it was acquired by the Grand Duchess Eleanor of 
Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I, who though she saw only 
the beginnings of its splendours lived there awhile and there 



THE PITTI 327 

brought up her doomed brood. Eleanor's architect — or 
rather Cosimo's, for though the Grand Duchess paid, the 
Grand Duke controlled — was Ammanati, the designer of 
the Neptune fountain in the Piazza della Signoria. Other 
important additions were made later. The last Medicean 
Grand Duke to occupy the Pitti was Gian Gastone, a 
bizarre detrimental, whose head, in a monstrous wig, 
may be seen at the top of the stairs leading to the Uffizi 
gallery. He died in 1737. 

As I have said in Chapter VIII, it was by the will of 
Gian Gastone's sister, widow of the Elector Palatine, who 
died in 1743, that the Medicean collections became the 
property of the Florentines. This bequest did not, how- 
ever, prevent the migration of many of the best pictures 
to Paris under Napoleon, but after Waterloo they came 
back. The Pitti continued to be the home of princes 
after Gian Gastone quitted a world which he found strange 
and made more so ; but they were not of the Medici blood. 
It is now a residence of the royal family. 

The first thing to do if by evil chance one enters the 
Pitti by the covered way from the Uffizi is, just before 
emerging into the palace, to avoid the room where copies 
of pictures are sold, for not only is it a very catacomb of 
headache, from the fresh paint, but the copies are in them- 
selves horrible and lead to disquieting reflections on the 
subject of sweated labour. The next thing to do, on at 
last emerging, is to walk out on the roof from the little 
room at the top of the stairs, and get a supply of fresh air 
for the gallery, and see Florence, which is very beautiful 
from here. Looking over the city one notices that the 
tower of the Palazzo Vecchio is almost more dominating 
than the Duomo> the work of the same architect who 
began this palace. Between the two is Fiesole. The 



328 THE PITTI 

Signoria tower is, as I say, the highest. Then the Duomo. 
Then Giotto's Campanile. The Bargello is hidden, but 
the graceful Badia tower is seen; also the little white 
Baptistery roof with its lantern just showing. From the 
fortezza come the sounds of drums and bugles. 

Returning from this terrace we skirt a vast porphyry 
basin and reach the top landing of the stairs (which was, I 
presume, once a loggia) where there is a very charming 
marble fountain; and from this we enter the first room 
of the gallery. The Pitti walls are so congested and so 
many of the pictures so difficult to see, that I propose to 
refer only to those which, after a series of visits, seem to 
me the absolute best. Let me hasten to say that to visit 
the Pitti gallery on any but a really bright day is folly. 
The great windows (which were to be larger than Cosimo 
de' Medici's doors) are excellent to look out of, but the 
rooms are so crowded with paintings on walls and ceilings, 
and the curtains are so absorbent of light, that unless there 
is sunshine one gropes in gloom. The only pictures in 
short that are properly visible are those on screens or 
hinges ; and these are, fortunately almost without exception, 
the best. The Pitti rooms were never made for pictures at 
all, and it is really absurd that so many beautiful things 
should be massed here without reasonable lighting. 

The Pitti also is always crowded. The Uffizi is never 
crowded ; the Accademia is always comfortable ; the Bar- 
gello is sparsely attended. But the Pitti is normally con- 
gested, not only by individuals but by flocks, whose guides, 
speaking broken English, and sometimes broken American, 
lead from room to room. I need hardly say that they 
form the tightest knots before the works of Raphael. All 
this is proper enough, of course, but it serves to render the 
Pitti a difficult gallery rightly to study pictures in. 




THE MADONNA DELLA SEDIA (OF THE CHAIR) 

FROM THE PAINTING BY RAPHAEL IN THE PITTI 



GIORGIONE 329 

In the first chapter on the Uffizi I have said how simple 
it is, in the Pitti, to name the best picture of all, and how 
difficult in most galleries. But the Pitti has one particular 
jewel which throws everything into the background : the 
work not of a Florentine but of a Venetian: "The Con- 
cert " of Giorgione, which stands on an easel in the Sala di 
Marte. 1 It is true that modern criticism has doubted the 
rightness of the ascription, and many critics, whose one idea 
seems to be to deprive Giorgione of any pictures at all, 
leaving ' him but a glorious name without anything to 
account for it, call it an early Titian; but this need not 
trouble us. There the picture is, and never do I think to 
see anything more satisfying. Piece by piece, it is not 
more than fine rich painting, but as a whole it is im- 
pressive and mysterious and enchanting. Pater compares 
the effect of it to music ; and he is right. 

The Sala dell' Iliade (the name of each room refers 
always to the ceiling painting, which, however, one quite 
easily forgets to look at) is chiefly notable for the Raphael 
just inside the door : "La Donna Gravida," No. 229, one 
of his more realistic works, with bolder colour than usual 
and harder treatment ; rather like the picture that has 
been made its pendant, No. 224, an " Incognita " by Ridolfo 
Ghirlandaio, very firmly painted, but harder still. Between 
them f% the first of the many Pitti Andrea del Sartos : No. 
225, an "Assumption of the Madonna," opposite a similar 
work from the same brush, neither containing quite the 
finest traits of this artist. But the youth with out- 
stretched hand at the tomb is nobly done. No. 265, "Prin- 
cipe Mathias de' Medici," is a good bold Sustermans, but 
No. 190, on the opposite wall, is a far better — a most charm- 

1 The position of easel pictures in the Florentine galleries often 
changes. 



330 THE PITTI 

ing work representing the Crown Prince of Denmark, son of 
Frederick III. Justus Sustermans, who has so many por- 
traits here and elsewhere in Florence, was a Belgian, born 
in 1597, who settled in Florence as a portrait painter to 
Cosimo III. Van Dyck greatly admired his work and 
painted him. He died at Florence in 1681. 

No. 208, a "Virgin Enthroned," by Fra Bartolommeo, is 
from S. Marco, and it had better have been painted on the 
wall there, like the Fra Angelicos, and then the convent 
would have it still. The Child is very attractive, as almost 
always in this artist's work, but the picture as a whole has 
grown rather dingy. By the window' is a Velasquez, the 
first we have seen in Florence, a little Philip IV on his 
prancing steed, rather too small for its subject, but very 
interesting here among the Italians. 

In the next large room — the Sala di Saturno — we come 
again to Raphael, who is indeed the chief master of the 
Pitti, his exquisite "Madonna del Granduca" being just 
to the left of the door. Here we have the simplest colour- 
ing and perfect sweetness, and such serenity of mastery as 
must be the despair of the copyists, who, however, never 
cease attempting it. The only defect is a little clumsiness in 
the Madonna's hand. The picture was lost for two centuries 
and it then changed owners for twelve crowns, the seller 
being a poor woman and the buyer a bookseller - The 
bookseller found a ready purchaser in the director of the 
Grand Duke Ferdinand Ill's gallery, and the Grand Duke 
so esteemed it that he carried it with him on all his jour- 
neys, just as Sir George Beaumont, the English con- 
noisseur, never travelled without a favourite Claude. 
Hence its name. Another Andrea del Sarto, the " Disputa 
sulla Trinita," No. 172, is close by, nobly drawn but again 
not of his absolute best, and then five more Raphaels or 



RAPHAEL 331 

putative Raphaels — No. 171, Tommaso Inghirami; No. 
61, Angelo Doni, the collector and the friend of artists, for 
whom Michelangelo painted his "Holy Family" in the 
Uffizi ; No. 59, Maddalena Doni ; and above all No. 174, 
"The Vision of Ezekiel," that little great picture, so strong 
and spirited, and — to coin a word — Sixtinish. All these, I 
may say, are questioned by experts ; but some very fine hand 
is to be seen in them any way. Over the " Ezekiel " is still 
another, No. 165, the " Madonna detta del Baldacchino," 
which is so much better in the photographs. Next this 
group — No. 164 — we find Raphael's friend Perugino with 
an Entombment, but it lacks his divine glow ; and above it 
a soft and mellow and easy Andrea del Sarto, No. 163, 
which ought to be in a church rather than here. A better 
Perugino is No. 42, which has all his sweetness, but to call 
it the Magdalen is surely wrong ; and close by it a rather 
formal Fra Bartolommeo, No. 159, " Gesu Resuscitato," 
from the church of SS. Annunziata, in which once again the 
babies who hold the circular landscape are the best part. 
After another doubtful Raphael — the sly Cardinal Divizio 
da Bibbiena, No. 158 — let us look at an unquestioned one, 
No. 151, the most popular picture in Florence, if not the 
whole world, Raphael's " Madonna della Sedia," that 
beautiful rich scene of maternal tenderness and infantine 
peace. Personally I do not find myself often under Ra- 
phael's spell ; but here he conquers. The Madonna again 
is without enough expression, but her arms are right, and 
the Child is right, and the colour is so rich, almost Venetian 
in that odd way in which Raphael now and then could 
suggest Venice. 

It is interesting to compare Raphael's two famous 
Madonnas in this room : this one belonging to his Roman 
period and the other, opposite it, to Florence, with the 



332 THE PITTI 

differences so marked. For by the time he painted this 
he knew more of life and human affection. This picture, 
I suppose, might be called the consummation of Renaissance 
painting in fullest bloom : the latest triumph of that im- 
pulse. I do not say it is the best; but it may be called 
a crown on the whole movement both in subject and treat- 
ment. Think of the gulf between the Cimabue Madonna 
and the Giotto Madonna, side by side, which we saw in 
the Accademia, and this. With so many vivid sympathies 
Giotto must have wanted with all his soul to make the 
mother motherly and the child childlike; but the time 
was not yet ; his hand was neither free nor fit. Between 
Giotto and Raphael had to come many things before such 
treatment as this was possible ; most of all, I think, Luca 
della Robbia had to come between, for he was the most 
valuable reconciler of God and man of them all. He was 
the first to bring a tender humanity into the Church, the 
first to know that a mother's fingers, holding a baby, sink 
into its soft little body. Without Luca I doubt if the 
"Madonna della Sedia" could be the idyll of protective 
solicitude and loving pride that it is. 

The Sala di Giove brings us to Venetian painting indeed, 
and glorious painting too, for next the door is Titian's 
"Bella," No. 18, the lady in the peacock-blue dress with 
purple sleeves, all richly embroidered in gold, whom to see 
once is to remember for ever. On the other side of the 
door is Andrea's brilliant "S. John the Baptist as a Boy," 
No. 272, and then the noblest Fra Bartolommeo here, a 
Deposition, No. 64, not good in colour, but superbly 
drawn and pitiful. In this room also is the monk's 
great spirited figure of S. Marco, for the convent of that 
name. Between them is a Tintoretto, No. 131, Vin- 
cenzo Zeino, one of his ruddy old men, with a glimpse of 



TWO OLD MEN 333 

Venice, under an angry sky, through the window. Over 
the door, No. 124, is an Annunciation by Andrea, with a 
slight variation in it, for two angels accompany that one 
who brings the news, and the announcement is made from 
the right instead of the left, while the incident is being 
watched by some people on the terrace over a classical por- 
tico. A greater Andrea hangs next : No. 123, the Madonna 
in Glory, fine but rather formal, and, like all Andrea's 
work, hall-marked by its woman type. The other notable 
pictures are Raphael's Fornarina, No. 245, which is far more 
Venetian than the "Madonna della Sedia," and has been 
given to Sebastian del Piombo ; and the Venetian group on 
the right of the door, which is not only interesting for its 
own charm but as being a foretaste of the superb and glori- 
ous Giorgione in the Sala di Marte, which we now enter. 
Here we find a Rembrandt, No. 16, an old man : age 
and dignity emerging golden from the gloom; and as a 
pendant a portrait, with somewhat similar characteristics, 
but softer, by Tintoretto, No. 83. Between them is a 
prosperous, ruddy group of scholars by Rubens, who has 
placed a vase of tulips before the bust of Seneca. And we 
find Rubens again with a sprawling, brilliant feat entitled 
"The Consequences of War," but what those conse- 
quences are, beyond nakedness, one has difficulty in dis- 
cerning. Raphael's Holy Family, No. 94 (also known as 
the "Madonna dell' Impannata"), next it might be called 
the perfection of drawing without feeling. The author- 
ities consider it a school piece : that is to say, chiefly 
the work of his imitators. The vivacity of the Child's face 
is very remarkable. The best Andrea is in this room — 
a Holy Family, No. 81, which gets sweeter and simpler 
and richer with every glance. Other Andreas are here too, 
notably on the right of the further door a sweet mother 



334 THE PITTI 

and sprawling, vigorous Child. But every Andrea that I 
see makes me think more highly of the "Madonna della 
Sacco," in the cloisters of SS. Annunziata. Van Dyck, 
who painted much in Italy before settling down at the Eng- 
lish court, we find in this room with a masterly full-length 
seated portrait of an astute cardinal. But the room's 
greatest glory, as I have said, is the Giorgione on the easel. 

In the Sala di Apollo, at the right of the door as we 
enter, is Andrea's portrait of himself, a serious and mysteri- 
ous face shining out of darkness, and below it is Titian's 
golden Magdalen, No. 67, the same ripe creature that we 
saw at the Uffizi posing as Flora, again diffusing Venetian 
light. On the other side of the door we find, for the first 
time in Florence, Murillo, who has two groups of the 
Madonna and Child on this wall, the better being No. 63, 
which is both sweet and masterly. In No. 56 the Child be- 
comes a pretty Spanish boy playing with a rosary, and in 
both He has a faint nimbus instead of the halo to which 
we are accustomed. On the same wall is another fine 
Andrea, who is most lavishly represented in this gallery, 
No. 58, a Deposition, all gentle melancholy rather than 
grief. The kneeling girl is very beautiful. 

Finally there are Van Dyck's very charming portrait of 
Charles I of England and Henrietta, a most deft and dis- 
tinguished work, and Raphael's famous portrait of Leo X 
with two companions : rather dingy, and too like three 
persons set for the camera, but powerful and deeply interest- 
ing to us, because here we see the first Medici pope, Leo X, 
Lorenzo de' Medici's son Giovanni, who gave Michelangelo 
the commission for the Medici tombs and the new Sacristy 
of S. Lorenzo ; and in the young man on the Pope's right 
hand we see none other than Giulio, natural son of 
Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo's brother, who afterwards 




THE CONCERT 

FROM THE PAINTING BY GIORGIONE IN THE PITTI 



A PERFECT COPY 335 

became Pope as Clement VII. It was he who laid siege 
to Florence when Michelangelo was called upon to fortify 
it; and it was during his pontificate that Henry VIII 
threw off the shackles of Rome and became the Defender 
of the Faith. Himself a bastard, Giulio became the father 
of the base-born Alessandro of Urbino, first Duke of 
Florence, who, after procuring the death of Ippolito and 
living a life of horrible excess, was himself murdered by his 
cousin Lorenzino in order to rid Florence of her worst 
tyrant. In his portrait Leo X has an illuminated missal 
and a magnifying glass, as indication of his scholarly tastes. 
That he was also a good liver his form and features testify. 

Of this picture an interesting story is told. After the 
battle of Pavia, in 1525, Clement VII wishing to be friendly 
with the Marquis of Gonzaga, a powerful ally of the 
Emperor Charles V, asked him what he could do for him, 
and Gonzaga expressed a wish for the portrait of Leo X, 
then in the Medici palace. Clement complied, but wishing 
to retain at any rate a semblance of the original, directed 
that the picture should be copied, and Andrea del Sarto 
was chosen for that task. The copy turned out to be so 
close that Gonzaga never obtained the original at all. 

In the next room — the Sala di Venere, and the last room 
in the long suite — we find another Raphael portrait, and 
another Pope, this time Julius II, that Pontiff whose 
caprice and pride together rendered null and void and un- 
happy so many years of Michelangelo's life, since it was for 
him that the great Julian tomb, never completed, was 
designed. A replica of this picture is in our National 
Gallery. Here also are a wistful and poignant John the 
Baptist by Dossi, No. 380 ; two Diirers — an Adam and an 
Eve, very naked and primitive, facing each other from 
opposite walls; and two Rubens landscapes not equal to 



336 THE PITTI 

ours at Trafalgar Square, but spacious and lively. The 
gem of the room is a lovely Titian, No. 92, on an easel, a 
golden work of supreme quietude and disguised power. 
The portrait is called sometimes the Duke of Norfolk, 
sometimes the "Young Englishman." 

Returning to the first room — the Sala of the Iliad — we 
enter the Sala dell' Educazione di Giove, and find on the 
left a little gipsy portrait by Boccaccio Boccaccino (1497- 
1518) which has extraordinary charm : a grave, wistful, 
childish face in a blue handkerchief : quite a new kind of 
picture here. I reproduce it in this volume, but it wants 
its colour. For the rest, the room belongs to less-known 
and later men, in particular to Cristofano Allori (1577- 
1621), with his famous Judith, reproduced in all the picture 
shops of Florence. This work is no favourite of mine, but 
one cannot deny it power and richness. The Guido Reni 
opposite, in which an affected fat actress poses as Cleopatra 
with the asp, is not, however, even tolerable. 

We next pass, after a glance perhaps at the adjoining 
tapestry room on the left (where the bronze Cain and 
Abel are) the most elegant bathroom imaginable, fit for 
anything rather than soap and splashes, and come to the 
Sala di Ulisse and some good Venetian portraits : a bearded 
senator in a sable robe by Paolo Veronese, No. 216, and, 
No. 201, Titian's fine portrait of the ill-fated Ippolito de* 
Medici, son of that Giuliano de' Medici, Due de Nemours, 
whose tomb by Michelangelo is at S. Lorenzo. This 
amiable young man was brought up by Leo X until the 
age of twelve, when the Pope died, and the boy was sent to 
Florence to live at the Medici palace, with the base-born 
Alessandro, under the care of Cardinal Passerini, where he 
remained until Clarice de' Strozzi ordered both the boys to 
quit. In 1527 came the third expulsion of the Medici 



IPPOLITO DE' MEDICI 337 

from Florence, and Ippolito wandered about until Clement 
VII, the second Medici Pope, was in Rome, after the sack, 
and, joining him there, he was, against his will, made a 
cardinal, and sent to Hungary : Clement's idea being to 
establish Alessandro (his natural son) as Duke of Florence, 
and squeeze Ippolito, the rightful heir, out. This, Clement 
succeeded in doing, and the repulsive and squalid-minded 
Alessandro — known as the Mule — was installed. Ippolito, 
in whom this proceeding caused deep grief, settled in 
Bologna and took to scholarship, among other tasks trans- 
lating part of the ^Eneid into Italian blank verse; but 
when Clement died and thus liberated Rome from a vile 
tyranny, he was with him and protected his corpse from 
the angry mob. That was in 1534, when Ippolito was 
twenty-seven. In the following year a number of exiles 
from Florence who could not endure Alessandro's offensive 
ways, or had been forced by him to fly, decided to appeal 
to the Emperor Charles V for assistance against such a 
contemptible ruler; and Ippolito headed the mission; but 
before he could reach the Emperor an emissary of Ales- 
sandro's succeeded in poisoning him. Such was Ippolito 
de' Medici, grandson of the great Lorenzo, whom Titian 
painted, probably when he was in Bologna, in 1533 or 1534. 

This room also contains a nice little open decorative 
scene — like a sketch for a fresco — of the Death of Lucrezia, 
No. 388, attributed to the School of Botticelli, and above it 
a good Royal Academy Andrea del Sarto. 

The next is the best of these small rooms — the Sala of 
Prometheus — where on Sundays most people spend their 
time in astonishment over the inlaid tables, but where 
Tuscan art also is very beautiful. The most famous picture 
is, I suppose, the circular Filippino Lippi, No. 343, but 
although the lively background is very entertaining and 



338 THE PITTI 

the Virgin most wonderfully painted, the Child is a serious 
blemish. The next favourite, if not the first, is the Perugino 
on the easel — No. 219 — one of his loveliest small pictures, 
with an evening glow among the Apennines such as no 
other painter could capture. Other fine works here are 
the Fra Bartolommeo, No. 256, over the door, a Holy 
Family, very pretty and characteristic, and his "Ecce 
Homo," next it ; the adorable circular Botticini (as the cata- 
logue calls it, although the photographers waver between 
Botticelli and Filippino Lippi), No. 347, with its myriad 
roses and children with their little folded hands and the 
Mother and Child diffusing happy sweetness, which, if 
only it were a little less painty, would be one of the chief 
magnets of the gallery. 

Hereabout are many Botticelli school pictures, chief of 
these the curious girl, called foolishly "La Bella Simonetta," 
which Mr. Berenson attributes to that unknown disciple 
of Botticelli to whom he has given the charming name 
of Amico di Sandro. This study in browns, yellow, and 
grey always has its public. Other popular Botticelli de- 
rivatives are Nos. 348 and 357. Look also at the sly and 
curious woman, No. 102, near the window, by Ubertini, 
a new artist here ; and the pretty Jacopo del Sellaio, No. 
364 ; a finely drawn S. Sebastian by Pollaiuolo ; the Holy 
Family by Jacopo di Boateri, No. 362, with very pleasant 
colouring; No. 140, the "Incognita," which people used 
to think was by Leonardo — for some reason difficult to 
understand except on the principle of making the wish 
father to the thought — and is now given to Bugiar- 
dini ; and lastly a rich and comely example of Lombardy 
art, No. 299. 

From this room we will enter first the Corridio delle 
Colonne where Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici's miniature 



BRONZINO 339 

portraits are hung, all remarkable and some superb, but 
unfortunately not named, together with a few larger works, 
all very interesting. That Young Goldsmith, No. 207, 
which used to be given to Leonardo but is now Ridolfo 
Ghirlandaio's, is here ; a Franciabigio, No. 43 ; a questioned 
Raphael, No. 44 ; a fine and sensitive head of one of the 
Gonzaga family by Mantegna, No. 375 ; the coarse head of 
Giovanni Bentivoglio by da Costa, No. 376 ; and a Pol- 
laiuolo, No. 370, S. Jerome, whose fine rapt countenance is 
beautifully drawn. 

In the Sala della Giustizia we come again to the Vene- 
tians : a noble Piombo, No. 409; the fine Aretino and 
Tommaso Mosti by Titian ; Tintoretto's portrait of a man, 
No. 410 ; and two good Moronis. But I am not sure that 
Dosso Dossi's "Nymph and Satyr" on the easel is not the 
most remarkable achievement here. I do not, however, 
care greatly for it. 

In the Sala di Flora we find some interesting Andreas ; 
a beautiful portrait by Puligo, No. 184; and Giulio 
Romano's famous frieze of dancers. Also a fine portrait 
by Allori, No. 72. The end room of all is notable for a 
Ruysdael. 

Finally there is the Sala del Poccetti, out of the Sala di 
Prometeo, which, together with the preceding two rooms 
that I have described, has lately been rearranged. Here 
now is the hard but masterly Holy Family of Bronzino, 
who has an enormous amount of work in Florence, chiefly 
Medicean portraits, but nowhere, I think, reaches the level 
of his "Allegory" in our National Gallery, or the portrait 
in the Taylor collection sold at Christie's in 1912. Here 
also are four rich Poussins ; two typical Salvator Rosa land- 
scapes and a battle piece from the same hand; and, by 
some strange chance, a portrait of Oliver Cromwell by 



340 THE PITTI 

Sir Peter Lely. But the stone table again wins most 
attention. 

And here, as we leave the last of the great picture col- 
lections of Florence, I would say how interesting it is to the 
returned visitor to London to go quickly to the National 
Gallery and see how we compare with them. Florence is 
naturally far richer than we, but although only now and 
then have we the advantage, we can valuably supplement 
in a great many cases. And the National Gallery keeps 
up its quality throughout — it does not suddenly fall to 
pieces as the Uffizi does. Thus, I doubt if Florence with 
all her Andreas has so exquisite a thing from his hand as 
our portrait of a "Young Sculptor," so long called a por- 
trait of the painter himself ; and we have two Michelangelo 
paintings to the Uffizi's one. In Leonardo the Louvre is 
of course far richer, even without the Gioconda, but we 
have at Burlington House the cartoon for the Louvre's 
S. Anne which may pair off with the Uffizi's unfinished 
Madonna, and we have also at the National Gallery his 
finished "Virgin of the Rocks," while to Burlington House 
one must go too for Michelangelo's beautiful tondo. In 
Piero di Cosimo we are more fortunate than the Uffizi ; and 
we have Raphaels as important as those of the Pitti. We 
are strong too in Perugino, Filippino Lippi, and Luca 
Signorelli, while when it comes to Piero della Francesca we 
lead absolutely. Our Verrocchio, or School of Verrocchio, 
is a superb thing, while our Cimabue (from S. Croce) has a 
quality of richness not excelled by any that I have seen 
elsewhere. But in Botticelli Florence wins. 

The Pitti palace contains also the apartments in which 
the King and Queen of Italy reside when they visit Florence, 
which is not often. Florence became the capital of Italy 
in 1865, on the day of the sixth anniversary of the birth 







MADONNA ADORING 

FROM THE PAINTING BY BOTTICINI IN THE PITTI 



THE "PALLAS" 341 

of Dante. It remained the capital until 1870, when 
Rome was chosen. The rooms are shown thrice a week, 
and are not, I think, worth the time that one must give to 
the perambulation. Beyond this there is nothing to say, 
except that they would delight children. Visitors are 
hurried through in small bands, and dallying is discouraged. 
Hence one is merely tantalized by the presence of their 
greatest treasure, Botticelli's " Pallas subduing the Cen- 
taur," painted to commemorate Lorenzo de' Medici's suc- 
cessful diplomatic mission to the King of Naples in 1480, 
to bring about the end of the war with Sixtus IV, the 
prime instigator of the Pazzi Conspiracy and the bitter 
enemy of Lorenzo in particular — whose only fault, as he 
drily expressed it, had been to "escape being murdered in 
the Cathedral " — and of all Tuscany in general. Botticelli, 
whom we have already seen as a Medicean allegorist, 
always ready with his glancing genius to extol and com- 
mend the virtues of that family, here makes the centaur 
typify war and oppression while the beautiful figure which 
is taming and subduing him by reason represents Pallas, or 
the arts of peace, here identifiable with Lorenzo by the 
laurel wreath and the pattern of her robe, which is com- 
posed of his private crest of diamond rings intertwined. 
This exquisite picture — so rich in colour and of such power 
and impressiveness — ought to be removed to an easel in 
the Pitti Gallery proper. The "Madonna della Rosa," 
by Botticelli or his School, is also here, and I had a mo- 
ment before a very alluring Holbein. But my memory 
of this part of the palace is made up of gilt and tinsel and 
plush and candelabra, with two pieces of furniture out- 
standing — a blue and silver bed, and a dining table rather 
larger than a lawn-tennis court. 

The Boboli gardens, which climb the hill from the Pitti, 



342 THE PITTI 

are also opened only on three afternoons a week. The 
panorama of Florence and the surrounding Apennines 
which one has from the Belvedere makes a visit worth 
while; but the gardens themselves are, from the English 
point of view, poor, save in extent and in the groves on the 
way to the stables (scuderie). Like all gardens where 
clipped walks are the principal feature, they want people. 
They were made for people to enjoy them, rather than for 
flowers to grow in, and at every turn there is a new and 
charming vista in a green frame. 

It was from the Boboli hill-side before it was a garden 
that much of the stone of Florence was quarried. With 
such stones so near it is less to be wondered at that the 
buildings are what they are. And yet it is wonderful too — 
that these little inland Italian citizens should so have 
built their houses for all time. It proves them to have 
had great gifts of character. There is no such building 
any more. 

The Grotto close to the Pitti entrance, which contains 
some of Michelangelo's less remarkable "Prisoners," in- 
tended for the great Julian tomb, is so " grottesque " that the 
statues are almost lost, and altogether it is rather an 
Old Rye House affair ; and though Giovanni da Bologna's 
fountain in the midst of a lake is very fine, I doubt if the 
walk is quite worth it. My advice rather is to climb at 
once to the top, at the back of the Pitti, by way of the 
amphitheatre where the gentlemen and ladies used to watch 
court pageants, and past that ingenious fountain above it, 
in which Neptune's trident itself spouts water, and rest 
in the pretty flower garden on the very summit of the hill, 
among the lizards. There, seated on the wall, you may 
watch the peasants at work in the vineyards, and the white 
oxen ploughing in the olive groves, in the valley between 



AUTUMNAL SOUNDS 343 

this hill and S. Miniato. In spring the contrast beween 
the greens of the crops and the silver grey of the olives is 
vivid and gladsome ; in September, one may see the grapes 
being picked and piled into the barrels, immediately below, 
and hear the squdge as the wooden pestle is driven into 
the purple mass and the juice gushes out. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

Casa Guidi — The Brownings — Giotto's missing spire — James Rus- 
sell Lowell — Landor's early life — Fra Bartolommeo before Raphael — 
The Tuscan gardener — The " Villa Landor " to-day — Storms on the hill- 
side — Pastoral poetry — Italian memories in England — The final out- 
burst — Last days in Florence — The old lion's beguilements — The 

famous epitaph. 

ON a house in the Piazza S. Felice, obliquely facing the 
Pitti, with windows both in the Via Maggio and 
Via Mazzetta, is a tablet, placed there by grateful Florence, 
stating that it was the home of Robert and of Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning, and that her verse made a golden ring 
to link England to Italy. In other words, this is Casa 
Guidi. 

A third member of the family, Flush the spaniel, was 
also with them, and they moved here in 1848, and it was 
here that Mrs. Browning died, in 1861. But it was not 
their first Florentine home, for in 1847 they had gone 
into rooms in the Via delle Belle Donne — the Street of 
Beautiful Ladies, whose name so fascinated Ruskin — near 
S. Maria Novella. At Casa Guidi Browning wrote, among 
other poems, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," "The 
Statue and the Bust" of which I have said something in 
Chapter XIX, and the "Old Pictures in Florence," that 
philosophic commentary on Vasari, which ends with the 

344 



CASA GUIDI 345 

spirited appeal for the crowning of Giotto's Campanile with 
the addition of the golden spire that its builder intended — 

Fine as the beak of a young beccaccia 
The campanile, the Duorao's fit ally, 

Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia, 
Completing Florence, as Florence Italy. 

But I suppose that the monologues "Andrea del Sarto" 
and "Fra Lippo Lippi" would be considered the finest 
fruit of Browning's Florentine sojourn, as "Casa Guidi 
Windows" is of Mrs. Browning's. Her great poem is in- 
deed as passionate a plea for Italian liberty as anything 
by an Italian poet. Here also she wrote much if not all 
of "Aurora Leigh," "The Poems before Congress," and 
those other Italian political pieces which when her husband 
collected them as "Last Poems" he dedicated "to * grate- 
ful Florence.'" 

In these Casa Guidi rooms the happiest days of both 
lives were spent, and many a time have the walls resounded 
to the great voice, laughing, praising or condemning, of 
Walter Savage Landor; while the shy Hawthorne has 
talked here too. Casa Guidi lodged not only the Brown- 
ings, but, at one time, Lowell, who was not, however, a 
very good Florentine. "As for pictures," I find him writ- 
ing, in 1874, on a later visit, "I am tired to death of 'em, 
. . . and then most of them are so bad. I like best the 
earlier ones, that say so much in their half-unconscious 
prattle, and talk nature to me instead of high art." But, 
"the older streets," he says, "have a noble mediaeval 
distance and reserve for me — a frown I was going to call it, 
not of hostility, but of haughty doubt. These grim palace 
fronts meet you with an aristocratic start that puts you to 
the proof of your credentials. There is to me something 
wholesome in that that makes you feel your place." 



346 ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

The Brownings are the two English poets who first 
spring to mind in connexion with Florence ; but they had 
had very illustrious predecessors. In August and Septem- 
ber, 1638, during the reign of Ferdinand II, John Milton 
was here, and again in the spring of 1639. He read Latin 
poems to fellow scholars in the city and received compli- 
mentary sonnets in reply. Here he met Galileo, and from 
here he made the excursion to Vallombrosa, which gave 
him some of his most famous lines. He also learned enough 
of the language to write love poetry to a lady in Bologna, 
although he is said to have offended Italians generally by 
his strict morality. 

Skipping a hundred and eighty years we find Shelley in 
Florence, in 1819, and it was here that his son was born, 
receiving the names Percy Florence. Here he wrote, as I 
have said, his "Ode to the West Wind " and that grimly 
comic work "Peter Bell the Third." 

But next the Brownings it is Walter Savage Landor of 
whom I always think as the greatest English Florentine. 
Florence became his second home when he was middle-aged 
and strong ; and then again, when he was a very old man, 
shipwrecked by his impulsive and impossible temper, it 
became his last haven. It was Browning who found him 
his final resting-place — a floor of rooms not far from where 
we now stand, in the Via Nunziatina. 

Florence is so intimately associated with Landor, and 
Landor was so happy in Florence, that a brief outline of 
his life seems to be imperative. Born in 1775, the heir to 
considerable estates, the boy soon developed that whirl- 
wind headstrong impatience which was to make him as 
notorious as his exquisite genius has made him famous. 
He was sent to Rugby, but disapproving of the headmaster's 
judgment of his Latin verses, he produced such a lampoon 



A YOUNG FIREBRAND 347 

upon him, also in Latin, as made removal or expulsion a 
necessity. At Oxford his Latin and Greek verses were 
still his delight, but he took also to politics, was called a 
mad Jacobin, and, in order to prove his sanity and show 
his disapproval of a person obnoxious to him, fired a gun at 
his shutters and was sent down for a year. He never re- 
turned. After a period of strained relations with his father 
and hot repudiations of all the plans for his future which were 
made for him — such as entering the militia, reading law, 
and so forth — he retired to Wales on a small allowance 
and wrote "Gebir" which came out in 1798, when its 
author was twenty-three. In 1808 Landor threw in his 
lot with the Spaniards against the French, saw some fight- 
ing and opened his purse for the victims of the war; 
but the usual personal quarrel intervened. Returning to 
England he bought Llanthony Abbey, stocked it with 
Spanish sheep, planted extensively, and was to be the squire 
of squires ; and at the same time seeing a pretty penniless 
girl at a ball in Bath, he made a bet he would marry her, 
and won it. As a squire he became quickly involved with 
neighbours (an inevitable proceeding with him) and also 
with a Bishop concerning the restoration of the church. 
Lawsuits followed, and such expenses and vexations oc- 
curred that Landor decided to leave England — always a 
popular resource with his kind. His mother took over 
the estate and allowed him an income upon which he 
travelled from place to place for a few years, quarrelling 
with his wife and making it up, writing Latin verses every- 
where and on everything, and coming into collision not 
only with individuals but with municipalities. 

He settled in Florence in 1821, finding rooms in the 
Palazzo Medici, or, rather, Riccardi. There he remained for 
five years, which no doubt would have been a longer period 



348 ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

had he not accused his landlord, the Marquis, who was then 
the head of the family, of seducing away his coachman. 
Landor wrote stating the charge ; the Marquis, calling in 
reply, entered the room with his hat on, and Landor first 
knocked it off and then gave notice. It was at the Palazzo 
Medici that Landor was visited by Hazlitt in 1825, and 
here also he began the "Imaginary Conversations," his 
best-known work, although it is of course such brief and 
faultless lyrics as "Rose Aylmer" and "To Ianthe" that 
have given him his widest public. 

On leaving the Palazzo, Landor acquired the Villa 
Gherardesca, on the hill-side below Fiesole, and a very 
beautiful little estate in which the stream Affrico rises. 

Crabb Robinson, the friend of so many men of genius, 
who was in Florence in 1830, in rooms at 1341 Via della 
Nuova Vigna, met Landor frequently at his villa and has 
left his impressions. Landor had made up his mind to live 
and die in Italy, but hated the Italians. He would rather, 
he said, follow his daughter to the grave than to her wed- 
ding with an Italian husband. Talking on art, he said he 
preferred John of Bologna to Michelangelo, a statement 
he repeated to Emerson, but afterwards, I believe, re- 
canted. He said also to Robinson that he would not give 
£1000 for Raphael's "Transfiguration," but ten times that 
sum for Fra Bartolommeo's picture of S. Mark in the Pitti. 
Next to Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo he loved Perugino. 

Landor soon became quite the husbandman. Writing 
to his sisters in 1831, he says : "I have planted 200 cypresses, 
600 vines, 400 roses, 200 arbutuses, and 70 bays, besides 
laurustinas, etc., etc., and 60 fruit trees of the best qualities 
from France. I have not had a moment's illness since I 
resided here, nor have the children. My wife runs after 
colds ; it would be strange if she did not take them ; but 



THE VILLA LANDOR 349 

she has taken none here; hers are all from Florence. I 
have the best water, the best air, and the best oil in the 
world. They speak highly of the wine too; but here I 
doubt. In fact, I hate wine, unless hock or claret. . . . 

"Italy is a fine climate, but Swansea better. That, 
however, is the only spot in Great Britain where we have 
warmth without wet. Still, Italy is the country I would 
live in. . . . In two [years] I hope to have a hundred good 
peaches every day at table during two months : at present 
I have had as many bad ones. My land is said to produce 
the best figs in Tuscany; I have usually six or seven 
bushels of them." 

I have walked through Landor's little paradise — now 
called the Villa Landor and reached by the narrow rugged 
road to the right just below the village of S. Domenico. Its 
cypresses, planted, as I imagine, by Landor's own hand, are 
stately as minarets, and its lawn is as green and soft as that 
of an Oxford college. The orchard, in April, was a mass 
of blossom. Thrushes sang in the evergreens and the first 
swallow of the year darted through the cypresses just as we 
reached the gates. It is truly a poet's house and garden. 

In 1833 a French neighbour accused Landor of robbing 
him of water by stopping an underground stream, and Lan- 
dor naturally challenged him to a duel. The meeting was 
avoided through the tact of Landor's second, the English 
consul at Florence, and the two men became friends. At 
his villa Landor wrote much of his best prose — the " Pentam- 
eron," " Pericles and Aspasia " and the " Trial of Shake- 
speare for Deer-stealing," — and he was in the main happy, 
having so much planting and harvesting to do, his children 
to play with, and now and then a visitor. In the main too 
he managed very well with the country people, but one day 
was amused to overhear a conversation over the hedge be- 



350 ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

tween two passing contadini. "All the English are mad," 
said one, "but as for this one. . . . !" There was a story 
of Landor current in Florence in those days which depicted 
him, furious with a spoiled dish, throwing his cook out of 
the window, and then, realizing where he would fall, ex- 
claiming in an agony, "Good God, I forgot the violets !" 

Such was Landor's impossible way on occasion that he 
succeeded in getting himself exiled from Tuscany ; but the 
Grand Duke was called in as pacificator, and, though the 
order of expulsion was not rescinded, it was not carried out. 

In 1835 Landor wrote some verses to his friend Ablett, 
who had lent him the money to buy the villa, professing 
himself wholly happy — 

Thou knowest how, and why, are dear to me 
My citron groves of Fiesole, 
My chirping Affrico, my beechwood nook, 
My Naiads, with feet only in the brook, 
Which runs away and giggles in their faces ; 
Yet there they sit, nor sigh for other places — 

but later in the year came a serious break. Landor's 
relations with Mrs. Landor, never of such a nature as to 
give any sense of security, had grown steadily worse as he 
became more explosive, and they now reached such a point 
that he flung out of the house one day and did not return 
for many years, completing the action by a poem in which 
he took a final (as he thought) farewell of Italy : — 

I leave thee, beauteous Italy ! No more 
From the high terraces, at even-tide, 
To look supine into thy depths of sky, 
The golden moon between the cliff and me, 
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses 
Bordering the channel of the milky way. 
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams, 
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico 
Murmur to me but the poet's song. 



CINCIRILLO 351 

Landor gave his son Arnold the villa, settling a sum on 
his wife for the other children's maintenance, and himself 
returned to Bath, where he added to his friends Sir William 
Napier (who first found a resemblance to a lion in Landor's 
features), John Forster, who afterwards wrote his life, and 
Charles Dickens, who named a child after him and touched 
off his merrier turbulent side most charmingly as Leonard 
Boythorn in "Bleak House." But his most constant com- 
panion was a Pomeranian dog; in dogs indeed he found 
comfort all his life, right to the end. 

Landor's love of his villa and estate finds expression again 
and again in his verse written at this time. The most 
charming of all these charming poems — the perfection of 
the light verse of a serious poet — is the letter from Eng- 
land to his youngest boy, speculating on his Italian pursuits. 
I begin at the passage describing the villa's cat : — 

Does Cincirillo follow thee about. 
Inverting one swart foot suspensively, 
And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp 
Of bird above him on the olive-branch ? 
Frighten him then away ! 'twas he who slew 
Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed. 
That feared not you and me — alas, nor him ! 
I flattened his striped sides along my knee, 
And reasoned with him on his bloody mind, 
Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes 
To ponder on my lecture in the shade. 
I doubt his memory much, his heart a little, 
And in some minor matters (may I say it ?) 
Could wish him rather sager. But from thee 
God hold back wisdom yet for many years ! 
Whether in early season or in late 
It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast 
I have no lesson ; it for me has many. 
Come throw it open then ! What sports, what cares 



352 ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

(Since there are none too young for these) engage 

Thy busy thoughts ? Are you again at work, 

Walter and you, with those sly labourers, 

Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta, 

To build more solidly your broken dam 

Among the poplars, whence the nightingale 

Inquisitively watch'd you all day long ? 

I was not of your council in the scheme, 

Or might have saved you silver without end, 

And sighs too without number. Art thou gone 

Below the mulberry, where that cold pool 

Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit 

For mighty swimmers, swimming three abreast ? 

Or art though panting in this summer noon 

Upon the lowest step before the hall, 

Drawing a slice of watermelon, long 

As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips 

(Like one who plays Pan's pipe), and letting drop 

The sable seeds from all their separate cells, 

And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt, 

Redder than coral round Calypso's cave ? 

In 1853 Landor put forth what he thought his last book, 
under the title "Last Fruit off an Old Tree." Unhappily 
it was not his last, for in 1858 he issued yet one more, 
"Dry Sticks faggotted by W. S. Landor," in which was a 
malicious copy of verses reflecting upon a lady. He was 
sued for libel, lost the case with heavy damages, and once 
more and for the last time left England for Florence. He 
was now eighty -three. At first he went to the Villa 
Gherardesco, then the home of his son Arnold, but his 
outbursts were unbearable, and three times he broke away, 
to be three times brought back. In July, 1859, he made a 
fourth escape, and then escaped altogether, for Browning 
took the matter in hand and established him, after a period 
in Siena, in lodgings in the Via Nunziatina. From this 
time till his death in 1864 Landor may be said at last to 




THE MADONNA AND CHILDREN 

FROM THE PAINTING BY PERUGINO IN THE PITTI 



GIALLO 353 

have been at rest. He had found safe anchorage and never 
left it. Many friends came to see him, chief among them 
Browning, who was at once his adviser, his admirer, and 
his shrewd observer. Landor, always devoted to pictures, 
but without much judgment, now added to his collection ; 
Browning in one of his letters to Forster tells how he has 
found him "particularly delighted by the acquisition of 
three execrable dogs by Domenichino and Gasper Poussin 
most benevolently battered by time." Another friend says 
that he had a habit of attributing all his doubtful pictures 
to Correggio. "He cannot," Browning continues, "in the 
least understand that he is at all wrong, or injudicious, 
or unfortunate in anything. . . . Whatever he may profess, 
the thing he really loves is a pretty girl to talk nonsense 
with." 

Of the old man in the company of fair listeners we have 
glimpses in the reminiscences of Mrs. Fields in the "Atlantic 
Monthly" in 1866. She also describes him as in a cloud of 
pictures. There with his Pomeranian Giallo within fond- 
ling distance, the poet, seated in his arm-chair, fired com- 
ments upon everything. Giallo's opinion was asked on all 
subjects, and Landor said of him that an approving wag 
of Ins tail was worth all the praise of all the "Quarterlies." 
It was Giallo who led to the profound couplet — 

He is foolish who supposes 
Dogs are ill that have hot noses. 

Mrs. Fields tells how, after some classical or fashionable 
music had been played, Landor would come closer to the 
piano and ask for an old English ballad, and when "Auld 
Robin Gray," his favourite of all, was sung, the tears 
would stream down his face. "Ah, you don't know what 
thoughts you are recalling to the troublesome old man." 
2a 



354 ENGLISH POETS IN FLORENCE 

But we have Browning's word that he did not spend 
much time in remorse or regret, while there was the com- 
position of the pretty little tender epigrams of this last 
period to amuse him and Italian politics to enchain his 
sympathy. His impulsive generosity led him to give his 
old and trusted watch to the funds for Garibaldi's Sicilian 
expedition ; but Browning persuaded him to take it again. 
For Garibaldi's wounded prisoners he wrote an Italian 
dialogue between Savonarola and the Prior of S. Marco. 
The death of Mrs. Browning in 1861 sent Browning back 
to England, and Landor after that was less cheerful and 
rarely left the house. His chief solace was the novels of 
Anthony Trollope and G. P. R. James. In his last year 
he received a visit from a young English poet and enthusiast 
for poetry, one Algernon Charles Swinburne, who arrived 
in time to have a little glowing talk with the old lion and 
thus obtain inspiration for some fine memorial stanzas. On 
September 17th, 1864, Death found Landor ready — as 
nine years earlier he had promised it should — 

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on, 

And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady ; 

She who once led me where she would, is gone, 
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready. 

Landor was buried, as we saw, in the English cemetery 
within the city, whither his son Arnold was borne less than 
seven years later. Here is his own epitaph, one of the most 
perfect things in form and substance in the English lan- 
guage : — 

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. 

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art ; 
I warmed both hands before the fire of life, 

It sinks, and I am ready to depart. 

It should be cut on his tombstone. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

The human form divine and waxen — Galileo — Bianca Capella — A 
faithful Grand Duke — S. Spirito — The Carmine — Masaccio's place in 
art — Leonardo's summary — The S. Peter frescoes — The Pitti side — 
Romola — A little country walk — The ancient wall — The Piazzale Mi- 
chelangelo — An evening prospect — S. Miniato — Antonio Rossellino's 
masterpiece — The story of S. Gualberto — A city of the dead — The 

reluctant departure. 

THE Via Maggio is now our way, but first there is a 
museum which I think should be visited, if only be- 
cause it gave Dickens so much pleasure when he was here 
— the Museo di Storia Naturale, which is open three days 
a week only and is always free. Many visitors to Florence 
never even hear of it and one quickly finds that its chief 
frequenters are the poor. All the better for that. Here 
not only is the whole animal kingdom spread out before 
the eye in crowded cases, but the most wonderful col- 
lection of wax reproductions of the human form is to be 
seen. These anatomical models are so numerous and so 
exact that, since the human body does not change with 
the times, a medical student could learn everything from 
them in the most gentlemanly way possible. But they need 
a strong stomach. Mine, I confess, quailed before the end. 
The hero of the Museum is Galileo, whose tomb at 
S. Croce we have seen : here are preserved certain of his 
instruments in a modern, floridly decorated Tribuna named 
after him. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) belongs rather to 

355 



356 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

Pisa, where he was born and where he found the Leaning 
Tower useful for experiments, and to Rome, where in 
1611 he demonstrated his discovery of the telescope; but 
Florence is proud of him and it was here that he died, 
under circumstances tragic for an astronomer, for he had 
become totally blind. 

The frescoes in the Tribuna celebrate other Italian scien- 
tific triumphs, and in the cases are historic telescopes, 
astrolabes, binoculars, and other mysteries. 

The Via Maggio, which runs from Casa Guidi to the 
Ponte Trinita, and at noon is always full of school-girls, 
brings us by way of the Via Michelozzo to S. Spirito, but 
by continuing in it we pass a house of great interest, now 
No. 26, where once lived the famous Bianca Capella, that 
beautiful and magnetic Venetian whom some hold to 
have been so vile and others so much the victim of fate. 
Bianca Capella was born in 1543, when Francis I, Cosimo I's 
eldest son, afterwards to play such a part in her life, was 
two years of age. While he was being brought up in Flor- 
ence, Bianca was gaining loveliness in her father's palace. 
When she was seventeen she fell in love with a young Flor- 
entine engaged in a bank in Venice, and they were secretly 
married. Her family were outraged by the mesalliance and 
the young couple had to flee to Florence, where they lived 
in poverty and hiding, a prize of 2000 ducats being offered 
by the Capella family to anyone who would kill the liusband ; 
while, by way of showing how much in earnest they were, 
they had his uncle thrown into prison, where he died. 

One day the unhappy Bianca was sitting at her window 
when the young prince Francis was passing : he looked 
up, saw her, and was enslaved on the spot. (The portraits 
of Bianca do not, I must admit, lay emphasis on this story. 
Titian's I have not seen ; but there is one by Bronzino in 



BIANCA CAPELLA 357 

our National Gallery — No. 650 — and many in Florence.) 
There was, however, something in Bianca's face to which 
Francis fell a victim, and he brought about a speedy meet- 
ing. At first Bianca repulsed him; but when she found 
that her husband was unworthy of her, she returned the 
Prince's affection. (I am telling her story from the 
pro-Bianca point of view : there are plenty of narrators on 
the other side.) Meanwhile, Francis's official life going 
on, he married that archduchess Joanna of Austria for 
whom the Austrian frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio were 
painted ; but his heart remained Bianca's, and he was more 
at her house than in his own. At last, Bianca's husband 
being killed in some fray, she was free from the persecu- 
tion of her family and ready to occupy the palace which 
Francis hastened to build for her, here, in the Via Maggio, 
now cut up into tenements at a few lire a week. The at- 
tachment continued unabated when Francis came to the 
throne, and upon the death of his archduchess in 1578 
Bianca and he were almost immediately, but privately, 
married, she being then thirty-five; and in the next year 
they were publicly married in the church of S. Lorenzo 
with every circumstance of pomp ; while later in the same 
year Bianca was crowned. 

Francis remained her lover till his death, which was both 
dramatic and suspicious, husband and wife dying within a 
few hours of each other at the Medici villa of Poggia a 
Caiano in 1587. Historians have not hesitated to suggest 
that Francis was poisoned by his wife; but there is no 
proof. It is indeed quite possible that her life was more 
free of intrigue, ambition, and falsehood, than that of any- 
one about the court at that time; but the Florentines, 
encouraged by Francis's brother Ferdinand I, who succeeded 
him, made up their minds that she was a witch, and few 



358 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

things in the way of disaster happened that were not laid 
to her charge. Call a woman a witch and everything is 
possible. Ferdinand not only detested Bianca in life and 
deplored her fascination for his brother, but when she died 
he refused to allow her to be buried with the others of the 
family ; hence the Chapel of the Princes at S. Lorenzo 
lacks one archduchess. Her grave is unknown. 

The whole truth we shall never know ; but it is as easy 
to think of Bianca as a harmless woman who both lost and 
gained through love as to picture her as sinister and schem- 
ing. At any rate we know that Francis was devoted to 
her with a fidelity and persistence for which Grand Dukes 
have not always been conspicuous. 

S. Spirito is one of Brunelleschi's solidest works. Within 
it resembles the city of Bologna in its vistas of brown and 
white arches. The effect is severe and splendid; but the 
church is to be taken rather as architecture than a treasury 
of art, for although each of its eight and thirty chapels has 
an altar picture and several have fine pieces of sculpture — 
one a copy of Michelangelo's famous Pieta in Rome — there 
is nothing of the highest value. It was in this church that 
I was asked alms by one of the best -dressed men in Florence ; 
but the Florentine beggars are not importunate : they ask, 
receive or are denied, and that is the end of it. 

The other great church in the Pitti quarter is the Car- 
mine, and here we are on very sacred ground in art — for it 
was here, as I have had occasion to say more than once in 
this book, that Masaccio painted those early frescoes which 
by their innovating boldness turned the Brancacci chapel 
into an Academy. For all the artists came to study and 
copy them : among others Michelangelo, whose nose was 
broken by the turbulent Torrigiano, a fellow-student, 
under this very roof. 






MASACCIO 359 

Tommaso di Ser Giovanni, or Masaccio, the son of a 
notary, was born in 1402. His master is not known, but 
Tommaso Fini or Masolino, born in 1383, is often named. 
Vasari states that as a youth Masaccio helped Ghiberti 
with his first Baptistery doors ; and if so, the fact is signifi- 
cant. But all that is really known of his early life is that 
he went to Rome to paint a chapel in S. Clemente. He re- 
turned, apparently on hearing that his patron Giovanni de' 
Medici was in power again. Another friend, Brunelleschi, 
having built the church of S. Spirito in 1422, Masaccio be- 
gan to work there in 1423, when he was only twenty-one. 

Masaccio's peculiar value in the history of painting is his 
early combined power of applying the laws of perspective 
and representing human beings "in the round." Giotto 
was the first and greatest innovator in painting — the 
father of real painting; Masaccio was the second. If 
from Giotto's influence a stream of vigour had flowed 
such as flowed from Masaccio's, there would have been 
nothing special to note about Masaccio at all. But the 
impulse which Giotto gave to art died down; some one 
had to reinvigorate it, and that some one was Masaccio. In 
his thoughts on painting, Leonardo da Vinci sums up the 
achievements of the two. They stood out, he says, from 
the others of their time, by reason of their wish to go to 
life rather than to pictures. Giotto went to life, his 
followers went to pictures ; and the result was a decline in 
art until Masaccio, who again went to life. 

From the Carmine frescoes came the new painting. It 
is not that walls henceforth were covered more beautifully 
or suitably than they had been by Giotto's followers ; prob- 
ably less suitably very often ; but that religious symbol- 
ism without much relation to actual life gave way to scenes 
which might credibly have occurred, where men, women, 



360 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

and saints walked and talked much as we do, in similar 
surroundings, with backgrounds of cities that could be lived 
in and windows that could open. It was this revolution 
that Masaccio performed. No doubt if he had not, 
another would, for it had to come : the new demand was 
that religion should be reconciled with life. 

It is generally supposed that Masaccio had Masolino as 
his ally in this wonderful series ; and a vast amount of ink 
has been spilt over Masolino's contributions. Indeed the 
literature of expert art criticism on Florentine pictures 
alone is of alarming bulk and astonishing in its affirmations 
and denials. The untutored visitor in the presence of so 
much scientific variance will be wise to enact the part of 
the lawyer in the old caricature of the litigants and the 
cow, who, while they pull, one at the head and the other 
at the tail, fills his bucket with milk. In other words 
the plain duty of the ordinary person is to enjoy the 
picture. 

Without any special knowledge of art one can, by re- 
membering the early date of these frescoes, realize what 
excitement they must have caused in the studios and how 
tongues must have clacked in the Old Market. We have 
but to send our thoughts to the Spanish chapel at S. 
Maria Novella to realize the technical advance. Masaccio, 
we see, was peopling a visible world ; the Spanish chapel 
painters were merely allegorizing, as agents of holiness. 
The Ghirlandaio choir in the same church would yield a 
similar comparison; but what we have to remember is 
that Ghirlandaio painted these frescoes in 1490, sixty- 
two years after Masaccio's death, and Masaccio showed 
him how. 

It is a pity that the light is so poor and that the frescoes 
have not worn better ; but their force and dramatic vigour 







A GIPSY 

PEOM THE PAINTING BY BOCCACCIO BOCCACINI IN THE PITTI 



THE FRESCOES 361 

remain beyond doubt. The upper scene on the left of the 
altar is very powerful : the Roman tax collector has asked 
Christ for a tribute and Christ bids Peter find the money 
in the mouth of a fish. Figures, architecture, landscape, 
all are in right relation ; and the drama is moving, without 
restlessness. This and the S. Peter preaching and distrib- 
uting alms are perhaps the best, but the most popular 
undoubtedly is that below it, finished many years after by 
Filippino Lippi (although there are experts to question this 
and even substitute his amorous father) , in which S. Peter, 
challenged by Simon Magus, resuscitates a dead boy, just 
as S. Zenobius used to do in the streets of this city. Cer- 
tain more modern touches, such as the exquisite Filippino 
would naturally have thought of, may be seen here : the 
little girl behind the boy, for instance, who recalls the 
children in that fresco by the same hand at S. Maria 
Novella in which S. John resuscitates Drusiana. In this 
Carmine fresco are many portraits of Filippino's contempo- 
raries, including Botticelli, just as in the scene of the conse- 
cration of the Carmine which Masaccio painted in the 
cloisters, but which has almost perished, he introduced 
Brancacci, his employer, Brunelleschi, Donatello, some of 
whose innovating work in stone he was doing in paint, 
Giovanni de' Medici and Masolino. The scanty remains 
of this fresco tell us that it must have been fine indeed. 

Masaccio died at the early age of twenty-six, having 
suddenly disappeared from Florence, leaving certain work 
unfinished. A strange portentous meteor in art. 

The Pitti side of the river is less interesting than the 
other, but it has some very fascinating old and narrow 
streets, although they are less comfortable for foreigners to 
wander in than those, for example, about the Borgo SS. 
Apostoli. They are far dirtier. 



362 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

From the Pitti end of the Ponte Vecchio, one can obtain 
a most charming walk. Turn to the left as you leave the 
bridge, under the arch made by Cosimo's passage, and you 
are in the Via de' Bardi, the backs of whose houses on the 
river side are so beautiful from the Uffizi's central arches, 
as Mr. Morley's picture shows. At the end of the street 
is an archway under a large house. Go through this, and 
you are at the foot of a steep, stone hill. It is really steep, 
but never mind. Take it easily, and rest half-way where 
the houses on the left break and give a wonderful view of 
the city. Still climbing, you come to the best gate of all 
that is left — a true gate in being an inlet into a fortified 
city — that of S. Giorgio, high on the Boboli hill by the 
fort. The S. Giorgio gate has a S. George killing a dragon, 
in stone, on its outside, and the saint painted within, 
DonatehVs conception of him being followed by the artist. 
Passing through, you are in the country. The fort and 
gardens are on one side and villas on the other; and a 
great hill-side is in front, covered with crops. Do not go 
on, but turn sharp to the left and follow the splendid city 
wall, behind which for a long way is the garden of the Villa 
Karolath, one of the choicest spots in Florence, occasionally 
tossing it branches over the top. This wall is immense all 
the way down to the Porta S. Miniato, and two of the old 
towers are still standing in their places upon it. Botti- 
cini's National Gallery picture tells exactly how they 
looked in their heyday. Ivy hangs over, grass and flowers 
spring from the ancient stones, and lizards run about. 
Underneath are olive-trees. 

It was, by the way, in the Via de' Bardi that George 
Eliot's Romola lived, for she was of the Bardi family. The 
story of Romola, it may be remembered, begins on the 
morning of Lorenzo the Magnificent's death, and ends 



"ROMOLA" 363 

after the execution of Savonarola. It is not an inspired 
romance, and is remarkable almost equally for its psycho- 
logical omissions and the convenience of its coincidences, 
but it is an excellent preparation for a first visit in youth to 
S. Marco and the Palazzo Vecchio, while the presence in 
its somewhat naive pages of certain Florentine characters 
makes it agreeable to those who know something of the 
city and its history. The painter Piero di Cosimo, for ex- 
ample, is here, straight from Vasari ; so also are Cronaca, 
the architect, Savonarola, Capparo, the ironsmith, and 
even Machiavelli; while Bernardo del Nero, the gonfalo- 
nier, whose death sentence Savonarola refused to revise, 
was Romola's godfather. 

The Via Guicciardini, which runs from the foot of the 
Via de' Bardi to the Pitti, is one of the narrowest and 
busiest Florentine streets, with an undue proportion of 
fruit shops overflowing to the pavement to give it gay 
colouring. At No. 24 is a stable with pillars and arches 
that would hold up a pyramid. But this is no better than 
most of the old stables of Florence, which are all solid 
vaulted caverns of immense size and strength. 

From the Porta Romana one may do many things — 
take the tram, for example, for the Certosa of the Val 
d'Ema, which is only some twenty minutes' distant, or 
make a longer journey to Impruneta, where the della Robbias 
are. But just now let us walk or ride up the long winding 
Viale Macchiavelli, which curves among the villas behind 
the Boboli Gardens, to the Piazzale Michelangelo and S. 
Miniato. 

The Piazzale Michelangelo is one of the few modern 
tributes of Florence to her illustrious makers. The Dante 
memorial opposite S. Croce is another, together with 
the preservation of certain buildings with Dante associa- 



364 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

tions in the heart of the city; but, as I have said more 
than once, there is no piazza in Florence, and only one new 
street, named after a Medici. From the Piazzale Michel- 
angelo you not only have a fine panoramic view of the city 
of this great man — in its principal features not so vastly 
different from the Florence of his day, although of course 
larger and with certain modern additions, such as factory 
chimneys, railway lines, and so forth — but you can see 
the remains of the fortifications which he constructed in 
1529, and which kept the Imperial troops at bay for nearly 
a year. Just across the river rises S. Croce, where the great 
man is buried, and beyond, over the red roofs, the dome 
of the Medici chapel at S. Lorenzo shows us the position 
of the Biblioteca Laurenziana and the New Sacristy, both 
built by him. Immediately below us is the Church of S. 
Niccolo, where he is said to have hidden in 1529, when there 
was a hue and cry for him. In the middle of this spacious 
plateau is a bronze reproduction of his David, and it is 
good to see it, from the cafe behind it, rising head and 
shoulders above the highest Apennines. 

S. Miniato, the church on the hill-top above the Piazzale 
Michelangelo, deserves many visits. One may not be too 
greatly attached to marble facades, but this little temple 
defeats all prejudices by its radiance and perfection, and to 
its extraordinary charm its situation adds. It crowns the 
hill, and in the late afternoon — the ideal time to visit it — 
is full in the eye of the sun, bathed in whose light the green 
and white facade, with miracles of delicate intarsia, is balm 
to the eyes instead of being, as marble so often is, dazzling 
and cold. 

On the way up we pass the fine church of S. Salvatore, 
which Cronaca of the Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Strozzi 
built and Michelangelo admired, and which is now secular- 



A GAY CHURCH 365 

ized, and pass through the gateway of Michelangelo's 
upper fortifications. S. Miniato is one of the oldest 
churches of Florence, some of it eleventh century. It has 
its name from Minias, a Roman soldier who suffered 
martyrdom at Florence under Decius. Within, one does 
not feel quite to be in a Christian church, the effect partly 
of the unusual colouring, all grey, green, and gold and soft 
light tints as of birds' bosoms ; partly of the ceiling, which 
has the bright hues of a Russian toy ; partly of the forest 
of great gay columns ; partly of the lovely and so richly 
decorated marble screen ; and partly of the absence of a 
transept. The prevailing feeling indeed is gentle gaiety ; 
and in the crypt this is intensified, for it is just a joyful 
assemblage of dancing arches. 

The church as a whole is beautiful and memorable 
enough ; but its details are wonderful too, from the niello 
pavement, and the translucent marble windows of the apse, 
to the famous tomb of Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal, and 
the Luca della Robbia reliefs of the Virtues. This tomb 
is by Antonio Rossellino. It is not quite of the rank of 
Mino's in the Badia ; but it is a noble and beautiful thing 
marked in every inch of it by modest and exquisite thought. 
Vasari says of Antonio that he "practised his art with such 
grace that he was valued as something more than a man 
by those who knew him, who well-nigh adored him as a 
saint." Facing it is a delightful Annunciation by Alessio 
Baldovinetti, in which the angel declares the news from a 
far greater distance than we are accustomed to ; and the 
ceiling is made an abode of gladness by the blue and white 
figures (designed by Luca della Robbia) of Prudence and 
Chastity, Moderation and Fortitude, for all of which 
qualities, it seems, the Cardinal was famous. In short, 
one cannot be too glad that, since he had to die, death's 



366 THE CARMINE AND SAN MINIATO 

dart struck down this Portuguese prelate while he was in 
Rossellino's and Luca's city. 

No longer is preserved here the miraculous crucifix 
which, standing in a little chapel in the wood on this spot, 
bestowed blessing and pardon — by bending towards him — 
upon S. Giovanni Gualberto, the founder of the Vallom- 
brosan order. The crucifix is now in S. Trinita. The 
saint was born in 985 of noble stock and assumed naturally 
the splendour and arrogance of his kind. His brother 
Hugo being murdered in some affray, Giovanni took upon 
himself the duty of avenging the crime. One Good Friday 
he chanced to meet, near this place, the assassin, in so 
narrow a passage as to preclude any chance of escape ; and 
he was about to kill him when the man fell on his knees 
and implored mercy by the passion of Christ Who suffered 
on that very day, adding that Christ had prayed on the 
cross for His own murderers. Giovanni was so much im- 
pressed that he not only forgave the man but offered him 
his friendship. Entering then the chapel to pray and ask 
forgiveness of all his sins, he was amazed to see the crucifix 
bend down as though acquiescing and blessing, and this 
special mark of favour so wrought upon him that he 
became a monk, himself shaving his head for that purpose 
and defying his father s rage, and subsequently founded 
the Vallombrosan order. He died in 1073. 

I have said something of the S. Croce habit and the S. 
Maria Novella habit ; but I think that when all is said the 
S. Miniato habit is the most important to acquire. There is 
nothing else like it ; and the sense of height is so invigorat- 
ing too. At all times of the year it is beautiful ; but perhaps 
best in early spring, when the highest mountains still have 
snow upon them and the neighbouring slopes are covered 
with tender green and white fruit blossom, and here the 



FAREWELL 367 

violet wistaria blooms and there the sombre crimson of the 
Judas-tree. 

Behind and beside the church is a crowded city of the 
Florentine dead, reproducing to some extent the city of 
the Florentine living, in its closely packed habitations — the 
detached palaces for the rich and the great congeries of 
cells for the poor — more of which are being built all the 
time. There is a certain melancholy interest in wandering 
through these silent streets, peering through the windows 
and recognizing over the vaults names famous in Florence. 
One learns quickly how bad modern mortuary architecture 
and sculpture can be, but I noticed one monument with 
some sincerity and unaffected grace : that to a charitable 
Marchesa, a friend of the poor, at the foot of whose pedes- 
tal are a girl and baby done simply and well. 

Better perhaps to remain on the highest point and look 
at the city beneath. One should try to be there before 
sunset and watch the Apennines turning to a deeper and 
deeper indigo and the city growing dimmer and dimmer in 
the dusk. Florence is beautiful from every point of van- 
tage, but from none more beautiful than from this eminence. 
As one reluctantly leaves the church and passes again 
through Michelangelo's fortification gateway to descend, 
one has, framed in its portal, a final lovely Apennine 
scene. 



368 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 



Artists' Dates 



1300 (c.) 
1302 (c.) 



1308 (c.) 
1310 



Taddeo Gaddi born (d. 1366) 
Cimabue died (b. 1240) 



Andrea Orcagna born (d. 1368) 
Arnolfo di Cambio died (b. 1232 ?) 



1333 
1336 



Spinello Aretino born (d. 1410) 
Giotto died (b. 1276?) 



1344 



1348 



Simone Martini died (b. 1283) 



Andrea Pisano died (b. 1270) 



Some Important Florentine Dates 



1296 
1298 
1300 

1302 
1304 

1308 



1312 
1313 



1321 

1325 
1328 



1333 
1334 



1337 
1339 



1342 
1343 



1348 



Foundations of the Duomo conse- 
crated 

Palazzo Vecchio commenced by 
Arnolfo di Cambio 

Beginning of the feuds of the 
Bianchi and Neri 

Guido Cavalcanti died 

Dante exiled, Jan. 27 

Petrarch born (d. 1374) 



Death of Corso Donati 



Siege of Florence by Henry VII 
Boccaccio born (d. 1375) 



Dante died Sept. 14 (b. 1265) 



Destructive floods 

Foundations of the Campanile laid 



Or San Michele commenced 
Andrea Pisano's gates finished 



Black Death of the Decameron 
Giovanni Villani died (b. 1275 c.) 



ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



369 



Popes 



Boniface 
VIII 



1303 
Benedict XI 

1305 
Clement V 



1316 
John XXII 



1334 

Benedict 

XII 



1342 
Clement VI 



French 
Kings 



Philip IV 



_ 1314 
Louis X 
1316 
John I 
Philip V 



1322 
Charles IV 



1328 
Philip VI 



1350 
John II 



English 
Kings 



Edward I 



1307 
Edward II 



1327 
Edward III 



Milan 



Matteo 
Visconti 



1322 
Galeazzo 
Visconti 



1328 

1329 

Azzo 

Visconti 



1339 
Luchino 

and 
Giovanni 
Visconti 



Some Important General Dates 



1298 



1306 



1314 



1324 



1337 
1339 



1346 
1347 

1348-9 
1348 



Battle of Falkirk 



Coronation of Bruce 



Battle of Bannockburn 



John Wyclif born (d. 1384) 



Froissart born (d. 1410?) 

Beginning of the Hundred 
Years' War 



Battle of Crecjr 
Rienzi made Tribune of Rome 
Edward III took Calais 
Black Death in England 
S. Catherine of Siena born 



2B 



370 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 



Artists' Dates 



1356 



1366 
1368 
1370(c) 
1371 



1377 
1378 



1386 (?) 
1387 



1391 



1396 (?) 
1397 

1399 or 
1400 

1401 or 
1402 



Lippo Memmi died 



Taddeo Gaddi died (b. c. 1300) 

Andrea Orcagna died 

Lorenzo Monaco born (d. 1425) 
Gentile da Fabriano born (d. 1450) 
Jacopo della Quercia born (d. 1438) 



Filippo Brunelleschi born (d. 1446) 
Lorenzo Ghiberti born (d. 1455) 



Donatello born (d. 1466) 
Fra Angelico born (d. 14SS) 



Michelozzo born (d. 1472) 



Andrea del Castagno born (d. 1457) 
Paolo Uccello born (d. 147s) 

Luca della Robbia born (d. 1482) 

Masaccio born (d. 1428?) 



Some Important Florentine Dates 



1360 



1365 
(c.) 



1374 
i37S 
1376 

1378 



1389 
1390 

1394 



1399 



Giovanni de' Medici (di Bicci) born 



Ponte Vecchio rebuilt by Taddeo 
Gaddi 



Petrarch died 

Boccaccio died 

Loggia de' Lanzi commenced 

Salvestro de' Medici elected Gon- 
faloniere 



Cosimo de' Medici (Pater Patriae) 

born 
War with Milan 



Sir John Hawkwood died 



Competition for Baptistery Gates 



ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



371 



Popes 



_ 1352 
Innocent 
VI 



1362 . 
Urban V 



1370 
Gregory XI 



1378 
Urban VI 



Boniface 

rx 



1404 



French 
Kings 



John II 



1364 
Charles V 



1380 
Charles VI 



English 
Kings 



Edward III 



1377 
Richard II 



1309 
Henry IV 



Milan 



Luchino and 
Giovanni 
Visconti 

1354 
Matteo 
Bernabo 
Galeazzo 



1378 

Gian' 

Galeazzo 

Visconti 



1402 

Gian Maria 

Visconti 



Some Important General Dates 



1356 



1362 



1379 



1381 



1400 



Battle of Poictiers 



First draft of Piers Plowman 



Thomas a Kempis born 



Wat Tyler's Rebellion 



Geoffrey Chaucer died 



372 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 





Artists' Dates 


Some Important Florentine Dates 


1405 


Leon Battista Alberti born (d. 1472 ) 






1406 


Lippo Lippi born (d. 1469) 






1409 


Bernardo Rossellino born (d. 1464) 






1 410 


Spinello Aretino died 






141 5 


Piero della Francesca born (d. 1492 ) 










1416 


Piero de' Medici (il Gottoso) born 


1420 


Benozzo Gozzoli born (d. 1498) 


1419 








1421 


Purchase of Leghorn by Florence 
Giovanni de' Medici elected Gon- 

faloniere 
Spedale degli Innocenti commenced 






1424 


Ghiberti's first gates set up 


142S 


Lorenzo Monaco died 

Alessio Baldovinetti born (d. 1499) 






1427 


Antonio Rossellino born (d. 1478) 






1428(F) 


Masaccio died 


1428 


Giovanni de' Medici died 


1428 


Desiderio da Settignano born (d. 

1464) 
Giovanni Bellini born (d. 1516) 






1429 (?) 








Antonio Pollaiuolo born (d. 1498) 






1430 


Cosimo Tura died 






143 1 


Andrea Mantegna born (d. 1506) 






1432 (?) 


Mina da Fiesole born (d. 1484) 


1432 


Niccold da Uzzano died 






1433 


Marsilio Ficino born 

Cosimo de' Medici banished, Oct. 3 






1434 


Cosimo returned to power, Sept. 29 
Banishment of Albizzi and Strozzi 


1435 


Andrea Verrocchio born (d. 1488) 


1435 


Francesco Sforza visited Florence 




Andrea della Robbia born (d. 1525) 


1436 


Brunelleschi's dome completed 
The Duomo consecrated 


1438 


Melozzo da Forli born (d. 1494) 






1439 


Cosimo Rosselli born (d. 1507) 


1439 


Council of Florence 
Gemisthos Plethon in Florence 






1440 


Cosimo occupied the Medici Palace 


1441 


Luca Signorelli born (d. 1523) 


1441 




1442 


Benedetto da Maiano born (d. 1497) 






1444 


Sandro Botticelli born (d. 1510) 






1446 


Brunelleschi died 

Perugino born (d. 1523 or 24) 

Francesco Botticini born (d. 1498) 






1449 


Domenico Ghirlandaio born (d. 


1449 


Lorenzo de' Medici (the Magnifi- 




1494) 




cent) born 


14SO 


Gentile da Fabriano died 







ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



373 



Popes 



French 
Kings 



English 
Kings 



Milan 



Some Important General Dates 



Innocent 

VII 

1406 

Gregory 

XII 

1409 

Alex. V 

1410 

John XXIII 



1417 
Martin V 



Charles VI 



1431 

Eugenius 

IV 



1447 
Nicolas V 



Henry IV 



1422 
Charles VII 



1413 
Henry V 



1422 
Henry VI 



Gian Maria 
Visconti 



1412 

Filippo 

Maria 

Visconti 



1447 



i4So 

Francesco 

Sforza 



1414 



142S 



1431 



1435(c) 



1450 



Council of Constance 



Siege of Orleans 



Joan of Arc burnt 



Hans Memling born 



John Gutenburg printed at 

Mainz 
Jack Cade's Insurrection 



374 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 



Artists' Dates 


Some Important Florentine Dates 


1452 


Leonardi da Vinci born (d. 1519T* 


1452 


Ghiberti's second gates set up 
Savonarola born 
Politian born 






1454 


1455 


Ghiberti died 
Fra Angelico died 






1456 


Lorenzo di Credi born (d. 1537) 






1457 


Cronaca born (d. 1508 or 9) 
Filippino Lippi born (d. 1504) 
Andrea del Castagno died 






1462 


Piero di Cosimo born (d. 1521) 






1463 or 4 


Desiderio da Settignano 


1463 


Pico della Mirandola born 


1464 


Bernardo Rossellino died 


1464 


Cosimo de' Medici died and was 
succeeded by Piero 


1466 


Donatello died 


1466 


Luca Pitti's Conspiracy 


1469 


Giovanni della Robbia born (d. 


1469 


Lorenzo's Tournament, Feb. 




1529) 




Lorenzo's Marriage to Clarice 




Lippo Lippi died 




Orsini, June 
Death of Piero, Dec. 
Niccold Machiavelli born 






1471 


Birth of Piero de Medici, son of 

Lorenzo 
Visit of Galeazzo Sforza to Florence 
Cennini's Press established in Flor- 


1472 


Michelozzo died 
Alberti died 


1472 


ence 
Sack of Volterra 


1474 


Benedetto da Rovezzano born (d. 

1556) 
Rustici born (d. 1554) 
Mariotto Albertinelli born (d. 1515) 


1474 


Ariosto born (d. 1533) 


1475 


Fra Bartolommeo born (d. 1517) 
Michelangelo Buonarroti born (d. 

1564) 
Paolo Uccello died 


1475 


Giuliano's Tournament 


1477 


Titian born (d. 1576) 
Giorgione born (d. 1510) 






1478 


Antonio Rossellino died 


1478 


Pazzi Conspiracy 
Giuliano murdered 






1479 


Lorenzo's Mission to Naples 


1482 


Francia Bigio born (d. 1525) 






1483 


Raphael born (d. 1520) 

Ridolfo Ghirlandaio born (d. 1 561) 






1484 


Mino da Fiesole died 






1485 


Sebastiano del Piombo born (d. 
IS47) 






i486 


Jacopo Sansovino born (d. 1570) 






i486 or 7 


Andrea del Sarto born (d. 1531) 






1488 


Verrocchio died 

Baccio Bandinelli born (d. 1560) 







ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



375 



Popes 



Nicolas V 



1455 
CalixtusIII 



1458 
Pius II 



1464 
Paul II 



1471 
Sixtus rv 



1484 

Innocent 
VIII 



French 
Kings 



English 
Kings 



1461 
Louis XI 



1483 

Charles 

VIII 



Milan 



1461 
Edwaru IV 



1483 
Edward V 
Richard III 

1485 
Henry VII 



Some Important General Dates 



Charles VII Henry VI Francesco 

Sforza 1453 



1455 



1466 

Galeazzo 

Maria 

Sforza 



1476 

Gian 

Galeazzo 

(Lodovico 

Sforza 

II Moro 

Regent) 



1467 



1470(c) 
1471 



1474 



1476 



1402 
1483 



1491 



Fall of Constantinople 

Beginning of the Wars of 
the Roses 



Erasmus born (d. 1528) 



Mabuse born (d. 1555) 
Albert Diirer born 
Caxton's Press established in 
Westminster 



Ariosto bom (d. 1533) 



Chevalier .Bayard born 



Hugo van der Goes died 
Rabelais born (d. 1553) 
Martin Luther born 
Murder of the Princes in the 
Tower 



Ignatius Loyola born 



376 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 



Artists' Dates 



1492 Piero della Francesca died 



1494 Jacopo da Pontormo born (d. 1556) 

Correggio born (d. 1534) 
Domenico Ghirlandaio died 
Melozzo da Forli died 



1497 Benedetto da Maiano died 

Benozzo Gozzoli died 



1498 Antonio Pollaiuolo died 
Francesco Botticini died 

1499 Alessio Baldovinetti died 

1500 Benvenuto Cellini born (d. 1572) 

1502 Angelo Bronzino born (d. 1572) 

1504 Filippino Lippi died 

1506 Mantegna died 

1507 Cosimo Rosselli died 

1508 Cronaca died 

1510 Botticelli died 
Giorgione died 

1511 Vasari born (d. 1574) 



1515 Albertinelli died 

1516 Giovanni Bellini died 

1517 Fra Bartolommeo died 

1518 Tintoretto born (d. 1594) 

1 519 Leonardo da Vinci died 



1520 Raphael died 

1 52 1 Piero di Cosimo died 



Signorelli died 
Perugino died 
1524 Giovanni da Bologna born (d. 1608) 

Andrea della Robbia died 
Francia Bigio died 



1528 Paolo Veronese born (d. 1588) 

Federigo Baroccio born (d. 1580) 



Some Important Florentine Dates 



1492 



1494 



1497 

1498 
1499 



1502 
1503 



1512 



1519 



1524 

1526 
1527 

1528 



Lorenzo the Magnificent died. 
Piero succeeded. 

Charles VIII invaded Italy. Piero 

banished 
Charles VIII in Florence. Sack of 

Medici Palace 
Florence governed by General 

Council 
Savonarola in power 
Politian died 
Pico della Mirandola died 

Francesco Valori elected Gonfa- 
loniere 

Piero attempted to return to Flor- 
ence 

Savonarola burnt 

Marsilio Ficino died 

Amerigo Vespucci reached America 



Death of Piero di Medici 



Cardinal Giovanni and Giuliano, 
Duke of Nemours, reinstated 
in Florence 

Great Council abolished 



Cardinal Giulio de' Medici in power 
Catherine de' Medici born 



Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici 
in power 

Death of Giovanni delle Bande Nere 
Ippolito and Alessandro left Flor- 
ence 
Machiavelli died 



ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



377 



Popes 



1492 
Alex. VI 



1503 
Pius III 
Julius II 



1513 
LeoX 



1522 
Hadrian VI 

1523 

Clement 

VII 



French 

Kings 



Charles 
VIII 



1498 
Louis XII 



i5i§ 
Francis I 



English 
Kings 



Henry VII 



1509 
Henry VIII 



Milan 



Gian 
Galeazzo 



Lodovico 
Sforza 



1499 
Exile of 
Lodovico 



Some Important General Dates 



1492 



1494 



1505 



1509 



1516 



1519 



1519-21 
1520 



1S27 
1528 



America discovered by Chris- 
topher Columbus 

Lucas van Leyden born (d. 
1533) 



John Knox born (d. 1582) 



John Calvin born 



More's Utopia written 



First Voyage round the world 

(Ferd. Magellan) 
Conquest of Mexico 
Field of the Cloth of Gold 



Brantome born (d. 1614) 
Albert Diirer died 



378 



HISTORICAL CHART OF FLOR 



1529 
1531 

1 534 
1537 



1547 



1554 
1556 



1560 
1561 



1564 



Artists' Dates 



Giovanni della Robbia died 
Andrea del Sarto died 
Correggio died 
Credi died 



Sebastiano del Piombo died 



Rustic! died 

Pontormo died 

Benedetto da Rovezzano died 



Baccio Bandinelli died 
Ridolfo Ghirlandaio died 



Michelangelo died 



Some Important Florentine Dates 



1529- 
30 
1530 
1531 



1537 



1539 



1553 



1564 



Siege of Florence 
Capitulation of Florence 
Alessandro de' Medici declared 
Head of the Republic 



Cosimo de' Medici made Ruler of 

Florence 
Battle of Montemurlo 
Lorenzino assassinated in Venice 
Cosimo married Eleanora di Toledo 

and moved to Palazzo Vecchio 



Cosimo occupied the Pitti Palace 



Galileo Galilei born 



ENCE AND EUROPE, 1296-1564 



379 



Popes 



Clement 
VII 



1534 
Paul III 



1550 
Julius III 



1555 
Marcellus 

II 
Paul IV 

I5S9 
Pius IV 



French 
Kings 



Francis I 



1547 
Henry II 



1559 
Francis II 

1560 
Charles IX 



English 
Kings 



Henry VIII 



1547 
Edward VI 



1553 
Mary 



„ 1558 
Elizabeth 



Milan 



Some Important General Dates 



1531-2 

1533 

1535 



1544 



1553 
1554 

1556 

1558 



1564 



Conquest of Peru 

Montaigne born (d. 1592) 

Henry VIII became Supreme 
Head of the Church 



Torquato Tasso born 



Edmund Spenser born 
Execution of Lady Jane Grey 
Sir Philip Sidney born 
Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer 

burnt 
Calais recaptured by the 

French 



Shakespeare born 



INDEX 



"Abundance," by Donatello, 268, 

313. 
Accademia, the, 224-41. 
Acciaioli family, and the Certosa, 

243. 
Albany, the Countess of, 212. 
Alberti, Leon Battista, his tomb 
and career, 218. 

his Rucellai palace and chapel, 

290-91. 

and S. Maria Novella, 297. 

Albertinelli, Mariotto, 119, 146, 

236. 
Alessandro, bastard son of Giulio 

de' Medici, 63, 65, 335. 
Alexander VI and Savonarola, 262. 
Alfieri, his tomb, 212. 
Allori, Cristofano, 336, 339. 
Ambrogio, S., 180. 
"Amico di Sandro," 139, 338. 
Ammanati, 99, 327. 
Andersen, Hans Christian, 317. 
Angelico, Fra, at the Uffizi, 118, 

148. 

at S. Domenico, 168. 

at the Accademia, 227-30, 

235. 

his life, 228. 

at S. Marco, 257-8. 

Annunziata, SS., church of, 275-8. 
Antiquities, the museum of, 281-3. 
Antonio, S., the "Good Arch- 
bishop," 258-60, 266. 
Apostoli, SS., church of, 294. 
Aquinas, S. Thomas, 309. 
Arnolfo and the Duomo, 4. 
— and S. Croce, 209. 
Arte della Lana, 95. 
Artists' names, 133. 



Austrian Grand Dukes, the, and the 
Uffizi, 111. 

Badia of Fiesole, the, 168. 

— of Florence, the, 170. 
Baldovinetti, Alessio, his career, 

300. 

at S. Trinita, 323. 

at S. Miniato, 365. 

Bande Nere, Giovanni delle, 66, 72. 
Bandinelli, his "Hercules and 

Cacus," 98. 

— and Michelangelo's cartoon, 105. 
Bandini, Bernado, 17, 19. 
Baptistery, the, its mosaics, 41. 
and Dante, 41. 

its doors, 43-7. 

Bardi family, the, 217. 
Bargello, the, 182-205. 
Baroccio, Federigo, 155. 
Bartolommeo, Fra, at the Uffizi, 
119, 148. 

at the Accademia, 235. 

his career, 236. 

and Savonarola, 265, 266. 

at the Pitti, 330, 331, 332, 

338. 
Beatrice and Dante, 174. 
Bellini, Giovanni, 123. 
Berenson, Mr., and "Amico di 

Sandro," 139, 338. 
Bigallo, the, 90. 
Boateri, Jacopo de', 338. 
Boboli gardens, the, 341. 
Boccaccino, Boccaccio, 336. 
Boccaccio and the Villa Palmieri, 

164. 

— and S. Maria Novella, 298. 
Bologna, Gian, 99. 



381 



382 



INDEX 



Bologna at the Bargello, 198. 
and Duke Ferdinand, 279. 

— Giovanni, at the Boboli, 342. 
Botticelli, his Pazzi cartoon, 19. 

— at the Uffizi, 132-44. 

— at the Accademia, 138, 237, 239. 

— and Savonarola, 139-41. 
Botticelli, his S. Augustine, 289. 

— at the Corsini, 292. 

— and the Pitti, 338, 341. 
Botticini, 165. 

— and various descriptions, 240. 

— at the Pitti, 339. 
Bracciolini ("Poggio"), 14. 
Brancacci, Chapel, at the Carmine, 

135, 361. 
Branconi, Alfred, the guide, 186, 

210. 
Bronzino at the Uffizi, 146, 155, 

159. 

— his Accademia tapestries, 241. 

— at the Pitti, 339. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, her 
grave, 285. 

— Robert, at Vallombrosa, 249. 
and "The Statue and the 

Bust," 279. 

and Landor, 352, 353. 

Brownings, the, in Florence, 344-5. 
Brunelleschi, his career, 8. 

— and the Duomo, 9. 

— and Florence, 10, 11. 

— his lantern model, 35. 

— and S. Lorenzo, 74. 

— his Baptistery competition re- 

lief, 197. 

— and Donatello's crucifix, 217. 

— and the Pazzi chapel, 221. 

— and the Pitti, 326. 

— and S. Spirito, 358. 

Bruni, Leonardo, his tomb, 213. 
"Brutus" of Michelangelo, 189. 
Buffalmacco, 171. 
Bugiardini, 338. 
Buonuomini, the, 260. 

"Calumny, The," by Botticelli, 

140. 
Campanile, the, its growth, 2. 



Campanile, its statues, 38. 

its reliefs, 39. 

the view from the top, 40. 

Charles V's comment, 64. 

compared with Palazzo Vec- 

chio tower, 97. 
Capella, Bianca, her story, 356-8. 
"Capparo, II," 53. 
Capponi, Piero, and the bells, 97. 
Carmine, the, and Michelangelo, 80. 

— the church of, 358-61. 
Carpaccio, 123. 
Carrand Collection, 195. 
"CasaGuidi," 344. 
Cascine, the, 286-8. 
Castagno, Andrea del, 255. 
Cavalcanti, Guido, 175. 
Charles V and Clement VII, 64. 
Charles VIII and Florence, 261, 263. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, and Cosimo I, 

68. 

his Autobiography, 103. 

his "Perseus," 103. 

at the Bargello, 198. 

Cennini, Bernardo, 318. 

Certosa, the, 242-4. 

Cimabue and the history of art, 231. 

— at the Accademia, 231. 

— at S. Maria Novella, 305. 
Clement VII. See Guilio de* 

Medici. 
Correggio, at the Uffizi, 150. 
Corsini palace, the, 292. 
Cosimo, Piero di, his career, 271. 
Council, the, of 1439, 23-5, 54. 
Credi, Lorenzo di, 120, 125, 131. 
Croce, S., 207-23, 297. 
Cronaca, his Great Council Hall, 

104. 

Dante and the Duomo, 5. 

— and Giotto, 6, 7. 

— his picture in the Duomo, 13. 

— the Italian Dante Society, 95. 

— his life-story, 173-7. 

— and modern Florence, 177. 

— his alleged house, 177. 

— painted by Giotto, 184. 

— his memorial, 207. 



INDEX 



383 



Davanzati, Palazzo, 318. 
David of Michelangelo, 98, 225. 

— as a Florentine hero, 186. 
Dickens in Florence, 179, 355. 
Dolci, Carlo, 152, 292. 
Dominic, S., and S. Marco, 257, 

266. 

— and S. Maria Novella, 308. 
Donatello, his "Poggio," 14. 

— his Duomo cantoria, 32-3. 

— at Prato, 33, 250. 

— his campanile statues, 38. 

— and Michelozzo at the Baptis- 

tery, 42. 

— and the Baptistery doors, 45. 

— his "Judith and Holofernes," 

61, 102. 

— and S. Lorenzo, 73-6. 

— and Or San Michele, 94. 
Donatello, his "Marzocco," 99. 

— and Uccello, 130, 192. 

— and the antiques, 160. 

— a wayside relief, 181. 

— at the Bargello, 187, 191-5. 

— his "Davids" considered, 187. 

— his life, 191-3. 

— his S. Croce "Annunciation," 

213. 

— and Brunelleschi's crucifix, 217. 

— and the Capella Pazzi, 221. 

— at the Capella Medici, 221. 

— and his figure of "Abundance," 

268, 313. 

— at S. Marco, 268. 
Donati, Corso, 174. 
Doni, Angelo, 125, 331. 
Dossi, Dosso, 335, 339. 
Drawings in the Uffizi, 115. 
Duccio, Agostino di, 34. 
Duomo, the, first impressions, 2. 
its beginnings, 4. 

its glass, 25. 

its spell, 26. 

its museum, 32. 

Diircr, at the Uffizi, 149, 157. 

— at the Pitti, 335. 

Egidio, S., 181. 

English Cemetery, the, 285. 



Etruscan remains at Fiesole, 167. 
the Museum of Antiqui- 
ties, 281. 

Fabriano, Gentile da, 233. 
Fabris, Emilio de, 11. 
Ficino, Marsilio, 235-55. 

in S. Maria Novella fresco, 

303. 
Fields, Mrs., and Landor, 353. 
Fiesole, 163-7. 

— Mino da, at Fiesole, 166. 

his tombs in the Badia, 171. 

his death, 172. 

his grave, 180. 

his tabernacle, 180. 

a wayside relief, 181. 

at the Bargello, 201. 

Flemish painters at the Uffizi, 152- 

54. 
Florence and the Renaissance, 1. 

— its noises, 2. 

Florence, its wealth in the four- 
teenth century, 36. 

— from the Campanile, 40. 

— its history evaded, 51. 

— and the Medici, 70. 

— its guilds, 95. 

— charges for museums and gal- 

leries, 113. 

— its music hall, 314. 

— its restaurants, 316. 

— its survivals from the past, 320- 

21. 
Florentines, illustrious, their Uffizi 
statues, 112, 113. 

— their character, 314-6. 
Forli, Melozzo da, 146. 
"Fortitude," by Botticelli, 144. 
Francesca, Piero della, 147. 
Francesco de' Vanchetoni, S., 

church of, 291. 
Franchetti Collection, 204. 
Franciabigio at the Uffizi, 150. 

— at the Chiostro dello Scalzo, 270. 

— at SS. Annunziata, 275. 

— his career, 275. 

Francis I of France and Italian 
artists, 129, 274. 



384 



INDEX 



Francis, S M and the S. Croce pulpit, 

210. 

frescoes, 216. 

his robe at SS. Ognissanti, 

289. 
in fresco, 323. 

Gaddi, Taddeo, his "Last Supper," 
223. 

and the Ponte Vecchio, 294. 

Galileo, his tomb, 219. 

— relics of, 356. 
Gemisthos, Georgius, 24, 55. 
"George, S.," of Donatello, 193. 
Gesil Morto, procession at Gras- 

sina, 250-3. 
Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, 9. 

— and the Duomo, 10. 

— and S. Zenobius, 22. 

— and his Baptistery doors, 43-7, 

197. 

— and Or San Michele, 94, 95. 

— his workshop, 182. 

— his S. Croce window, 208. 
Ghiberti, his birthplace, 246. 
Ghirlandaio, Domenico, and Mi- 
chelangelo, 78. 

his Palazzo Vecchio fresco, 

106. 

at the Uffizi, 124. 

at the Accademia, 234. 

at S. Marco, 267. 

at S. Trinita, 270, 321-3. 

at the Spedale, 280. 

his S. Jerome, 289. 

his SS. Ognissanti "Last 

Supper," 290. 

his life, 299-304. 

his S. Maria Novella frescoes, 

302-4. 

— Ridolfo, 145, 329, 339. 
Giorgio, S., its gate, 363. 
Giorgione at the Uffizi, 121. 

— at the Pitti, 329. 

Giotto and the Renaissance, 1. 

— and the holy water receptacle, 

4. 

— his career, 6. 

— his humour, 7. 



Giotto, his Campanile begun, 36. 

— and the Campanile reliefs, 39. 

— his portrait of Dante, 184. 

— his S. Croce frescoes, 215, 216. 

— his Capella Medici painting, 

221. 

— and the history of art, 232. 

— at the Accademia, 232. 

— at S. Maria Novella, 310. 

— and Ghirlandaio, 323. 

— and Raphael, 332. 

— and Masaccio, 359. 

Goes, Hugo van der, his triptych, 

152. 
Gozzoli, Benozzo, his Medici palace 

frescoes, 54-6. 
Granacci, Francesco, 120. 
Grassina, the procession of Gesu 

Morto, 250-3. 
Great Council Hall, the, 104-7. 
Grosso, Niccold, his eccentricities, 

53. 
Gualberto, S. Giovanni, and Val- 

lombrosa, 248. 

— his crucifix, 321. 

— his conversion, 366. 
Guilds, the, of Florence, 95. 

Hawkwood, Sir John, 14. 
Hazlitt calls on Landor, 348. 
"Hercules and Cacus," 98. 
Honthorst, Gerard, 156. 

Ignoto, his good painting, 128, 236. 

— his good sculpture, 200. 
Impruneta and its della Robbias, 

245. 
Iscrizioni at the Uffizi, 160. 

Jacopo of Portugal, Cardinal, his 

tomb, 365. 
Joanna of Austria, 103. 
John XXIII, his monument, 42. 
Judas in fresco, 223, 255, 290. 
"Judith and Holof ernes," by Dona- 
tello, 102. 

by Botticelli, 186. 

Julius II and Michelangelo, 81, 

226, 342. 



INDEX 



385 



Julius II, his portrait by Raphael, 
149, 292, 335. 

Lando, Michele, 318. 

Landor, Walter Savage, his grave, 

285. 

his career, 346-54. 

Laurenziana, Biblioteca, 88. 
Lely. Sir Peter, 157, 339. 
Leo X. See Giovanni de' Medici. 
Lippi, Filippino, at the Uffizi, 127, 

146, 148. 

his portrait by Botticelli, 135. 

at the Badia, 170. 

at Prato, 250. 

at the Corsini, 292. 

at S. Maria Novella, 306. 

at the Pitti, 337. 

— Fra Lippo, and S. Lorenzo, 74. 
at the Uffizi, 124. 

at the Accademia, 230, 238. 

at Prato, 250. 

at the Corsini, 292. 

Loggia de' Lanzi, 101. 
Lorenzo, S., its facade, 71. 

its treasures, 73-88. 

the cloisters, 87. 

Louvre, the, and Uccello, 192. 

— its Renaissance sculpture, 205. 

— and Ghirlandaio, 300. 

— and Leonardo, 340. 

Lowell, James Russell, in Florence, 
345. 

Machiavelli, his tomb, 213. 

— at S. Casciano, 244. 
"Madonna del Cardellino," by 

Raphael, 150. 

"Madonna del Granduca," by 
Raphael, 330. 

"Madonna del Pozzo," by Francia- 
bigio, 150. 

"Madonna del Sacco," by Andrea 
del Sarto, 278. 

"Madonna della Sedia," by Ra- 
phael, 331. 

Maiano, Benedetto da, and the 
Duomo, 11. 

at the Bargello, 199. 

2c 



Maiano, his S. Croce pulpit, 210. 

at S. Maria Novella, 306. 

and Ghirlandaio, 322. 

— Giuliano da, 11. 

Mainardi, Bastiano, and Ghirlan- 
daio, 300. 
Mantegna, Andrea, at the Uffizi, 122. 

— at the Pitti, 339. 
Marco, S., Museo of, 256-68. 

church of, 268-70. 

Market, the Old, 217, 313. 

— the New, 317. 
Maria Nuova, S., 181. 

— Novella, S., church of, 297-311. 
Marsuppini, Carlo, his tomb, 219. 
Martini, Simone, 118. 
Marzocco, the, 99, 195. 
Masaccio and the Baptistery doors, 

45. 

— and Michelangelo, 80. 

— and the history of art, 232. 

— at the Accademia, 239. 

— at S. Maria Novella, 305. 

— his Carmine frescoes, 358-61. 

— his life, 359. 
Masolino, 359. 

Medals at the Bargello, 202. 
Medici, Alessandro de', son of 
Clement VII, 63. 

his triumph, 65. 

his death, 66. 

— Anna Maria Ludovica, 69. 
de', 111. 

Medici, Catherine de', 62. 

— Clarice de', 324. 

— Clement VII, son of Giuliano de' 

Medici, 63. 

his intrigues, 63. 

and Charles V, 64. 

and Michelangelo, 83. 

— Cosimo de', "Father of his 

Country," and the Great 

Council, 23. 

his rule and character, 57-9. 

his favourite church, 72. 

his tomb, 72. 

and S. Marco, 256-8. 

— Cosimo I, his character and rule, 

67-9. 



386 



INDEX 



Medici, his statue, 100. 

and Etruscan remains, 282. 

his column, 323. 

and the Strozzi, 325. 

— Francis I de', and Bianca Ca- 

pella, 356-8. 

— Gian Gastone de\ 327. 

— Giovanni de', "II Bicci," 44, 56, 

75, 296. 
(Leo X) , son of Lorenzo, the 

magnificent, 62. 

and Michelangelo, 82. 

made a cardinal, 168. 

his christening, 303. 

his portrait, 334. 

— Giuliano de', his death, 18. 

and Botticelli, 138, 139, 142. 

Duke of Nemours, 62. 

his tomb, 84. 

— Giulio de' (Clement VII), his 

illegitimate son, 63. 

and Florence, 64. 

and Charles V, 64, 83. 

and Michelangelo, 83. 

his character, 334. 

— Ippolito de', 65. 

his portrait and career, 336. 

— Lorenzino de', as Brutus, 66. 

— Lorenzo de', "The Magnificent," 

and the Pazzi Conspiracy, 
16-19. 

his rule and character, 59- 

61. 

his descendants, 66. 

and Michelangelo, 80. 

his tomb, 85. 

Medici, Lorenzo de', and his tour- 
naments, 137-9, 207. 

and Savonarola, 261. 

and Botticelli, 341. 

Duke of Urbino, 62. 

his tomb, 84. 

— Piero de', "II Gottoso," and 

Gozzoli, 55. 

his rule and character, 59. 

and Botticelli, 134-6. 

and SS. Annunziata, 277. 

— Piero di Lorenzo de', 61, 139. 

— Capella, the, at S. Croce, 220. 



Medici, gardens, the, 270. 

— Grand Dukes and their tombs, 

76. 

— Palazzo, its vicissitudes, 52. 

— — its frescoes, 54-6. 
and Landor, 347. 

— Palle, the, 30, 53. 

— the, as picture collectors, 110, 

111. 

— Villa, the, 165. 
Medusa, the head of, 158. 
Memmi, Lippo, 118. 
Michelangelo, his last Pieta, 21. 

— and the S. Lorenzo facade, 71. 

— his S. Lorenzo sacristy, 77, 78, 

83-6. 

— his career, 78-86. 

— and the Julius tomb, 81, 226, 342. 

— his "David," 98, 225. 

— his house, 87. 

— his historical cartoon, 105. 

— and Angelo Doni, 125. 

— and Luca Signorelli, 125. 

— at the Uffizi, 125. 

— at the Bargello, 185-90. 

— his tomb at S. Croce, 211. 

— at the Accademia, 225-7. 

— and Andrea del Sarto, 273. 

— his Piazzale, 363. 

Michele, Giovanni di, at S. Croce, 

220. 
Michelozzo, his Prato pulpit, 33. 

— his statue of the Baptist, 34. 

— at the Baptistery, 42. 

— and Or San Michele, 94, 95. 

— at SS. Annunziata, 277, 278. 
Milton, John, at Vallombrosa, 247. 
in Florence, 346. 

Miniato, S., the church of, 364-6. 
Mirandola, Pico della, at the Badia 
of Fiesole, 168. 

his career, 268. 

Misericordia, the, 91. 
Monaco, Lorenzo, 117. 
Montefeltro, Federigo da, Duke of 
Urbino, 147. 

National Gallery compared with 
Florence galleries, 340. 






INDEX 



387 



Natural History Museum, 355. 
Nicholas V and S. Marco, 256. 
Niobe and her children, 100. 
Nori, Francesco, 212. 

Ognissanti, SS., church of, 289. 
"Old Pictures in Florence," by 

Browning, 345. 
Orcagna, Andrea, and Or San 
Michele, 92. 

his Loggia, 101. 

at the Uffizi, 120. 

at S. Maria Novella, 307. 

Or San Michele, 91-5. 

Painting, the evolution of, 231, 359. 
Palaces, the old, 178. 
Pallone, the game of, 287. 
Palmieri, Villa, the, 164. 

— and Botticelli, 165. 
Paolo, S., Loggia of, 311. 
Passage between Pitti and Uffizi, 

110, 115, 327. 
Pater, Walter, on Botticelli, 142. 

— or Giorgione, 329. 

Pazzi Conspiracy, the, 16-20. 

— the, and the Holy Land, 27. 

— and the Scoppio del Carro, 27. 

— Chapel, the, 221. 

— Jacopo de', his disinterment, 

222. 

— S. Maria Maddalena de', 284. 
Pelago, 246. 

"Perseus," by Cellini, 102, 198. 
Perugino at the Accademia, 237. 

— his triptych and life, 284. 

— at tbe Pitti, 331, 338. 
Peruzzi family, the, 217. 
Piazza della Signoria, 96-103. 

— di S. Croce, 207. 

— di S. Maria Novella, 311. 

— Vittorio Emmanuele, 313. 
Piazzale Michelangelo, 363. 
Piombo, Sebastian del, 150, 339. 
Piozzi, Mrs., quoted, 212, 292. 
Pisano, Andrea, and the Duomo, 8. 

and the Campanile reliefs, 39. 

his Baptistery doors, 43. 

— Niccola, 4. 



Pitti, Luca, his revolt, 134. 
326. 

— Palace, the, 326-43. 

the, its best picture, 329. 

the royal apartments, 340. 

Platonic Academy, the, 24, 168, 

290. 
"Poggio." See Bracciolini. 
Politian and the Pazzi conspiracy, 

19. 
r— his "Giostra," 137. 

— and the death of Lorenzo, 261. 

— his career, 269. 

— in S. Maria Novella fresco, 303. 
Pollaiuolo, Antonio, his Baptist re- 
lief, 34. 

and Ghiberti, 46. 

at the Uffizi, 144. 

at the Bargello, 199. 

at S. Marco, 267. 

at the Pitti, 338, 339. 

Pontassieve, 246. 
Ponte Trinita, 292. 

— Vecchio, 294. 
Porta S. Giorgio, 363. 
Miniato, 363. 

— Niccold, 364. 

— Romana, 363. 

Portigiani, Pagno di Lapo, 34, 42. 
"Primavera," by Botticelli, 137, 

237. 
Portinari, Folco, 181. 

— Tommaso, 152. 

Prato, Donatello's pulpit at, 33. 

— its treasures, 249. 
Pretender, the Young, 212. 

Raphael as architect, 100. 

— at the Uffizi, 149, 150. 

— and Andrea del Sarto, 273. 

— at the Corsini, 292. 

— at the Pitti, 329, 330, 331, 333, 

334, 335. 
Rembrandt, 159. 

— at the Pitti, 333. 
Renaissance, the, 1, 25. 
Reni, Guido, 292, 336. 

Robbia, Andrea della, at S. Egidio, 
181. 



388 



INDEX 



Robbia, at the Bargello, 203. 

at S. Croce, 214. 

in the Capella Medici, 221. 

at the Pazzi chapel, 222. 

at S. Marco, 267. 

at the Spedale, 280. 

— Luca, his Duomo doors, 20. 

his Duomo reliefs, 20. 

his cantoria, 32-3, 33-96. 

and the Campanile, 39. 

and the Baptistery doors, 45. 

and Or San Michele, 95. 

his art and genius, 202-4. 

della, and Raphael, 332. 

Robbias, della, at Impruneta, 245. 
at SS. Apostoli, 294. 

at S. Maria Novella, 307. 

at S. Paolo, 311. 

at S. Trinita, 321. 

at S. Miniato, 365. 

Robinson, Crabb, and Landor, 438. 
Romano, Giulio, 339. 
"Romola" and Savonarola, 265. 

— and Florence, 362. 
Rosa, Salvator, 339. 

Roselli, Cosimo, 120, 130, 146, 180. 
Rossellino, Antonio, 200. 

a boy's head, 291. 

his tomb at S. Miniato, 365. 

— Bernardo, his Madonna at S. 

Croce, 211. 
Rossini, his tomb, 213. 
Rovere, Vittoria della, 154. 
Rovezzano, Benedetto da, 190. 

at S. Trinita, 321. 

Rubens at the Uffizi, 154, 156. 

— at the Pitti, 333, 335. 
Rucellai family, 290, 297. 
Ruskin and Giotto, 7, 310. 
at S. Maria Novella, 310. 

— and the Campanile, 39. 

— and S. Croce, 209. 
Rustici, his career, 48. 

— his Baptistery group, 49. 

Salvatobe, S., the church of, 365. 
Salviati, Archbishop, 16, 18. 
San Giovanni, Giovanni di, 157, 
169, 182. 



Sansovino, Andrea, 199. 

— Jacopo, 200. 

Sansovino, Jacopo, and Andrea del 

Sarto, 272. 
Sarto, Andrea del, and his con- 
fectionery, 48. 

at the Uffizi, 145. 

at the Accademia, 231, 239. 

at the Chiostro dello Scalzo, 

270. 

his career, 271-4. 

at SS. Annunziata, 275, 278. 

his house, 281. 

at the Pitti, 329, 330, 331, 

332, 333, 334, 337. 

his copy of Raphael, 335. 

Sassetti family, 321. 

Savonarola, his terrible eloquence, 

22. 

— his statue, 106. 

— his prison, 108. 

— and Botticelli, 139-41. 

— his intaglio portrait, 149, 151. 

— and Fra Bartolommeo, 236, 265, 

266. 

— hia career, 260-66. 
Scoppio del Carro, the, 27-32. 
Seghers, Hercules, 159. 
Sellaio, Jacopo del, 338. 
Settignano, 167. 

— Desiderio da, and S. Lorenzo, 

74. 

his S. Croce tomb, 219. 

and the Pazzi chapel, 221. 

on Good Friday, 252. 

a boy's head, 291. 

at S. Trinita, 321. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his ancestor, 

15. 

— and the Medusa, 158. 

— in Florence, 286. 

Signorelli, Luca, at the Uffizi, 126. 

his life, 126. 

his wild flowers, 127. 

at the Accademia, 238. 

Signoria, Piazza della, and Savona- 
rola, 264. 
Simonetta, 137-9. 
Sixtus IV and the Medici, 16. 



INDEX 



389 



Sogliani, Gio Antonio, 120. 
Spanish Chapel, the, 308. 
Spedale degli Innocenti, 280. 
Spini family, 322. 
Spirito, S., church of, 358. 
"Statue and the Bust, The," by 

Browning, 344. 
Stefano, S., church of, 295. 
Storia Naturale, Museo di, 355. 
Strozzi, Clarice, at the Medici 

palace, 64. 

— Filippo, his tomb, 306. 

— Palazzo, 324. 
Sustermans at the Uffizi, 154. 

— at the Pitti, 329. 

Tacca, Pietro, at the Bargello, 
199. 

and John of Bologna, 279. 

his boar, 317. 

Talenti and the Campanile, 37. 

— and S. Maria Novella, 297. 
Tapestries at the Bargello, 204. 

— at the Accademia, 241. 

— at the Museum of Antiquities, 

283. 
Tintoretto at the Uffizi, 123. 

— at the Pitti, 332, 333, 339. 
Titian at the Uffizi, 122, 149. 

— at the Pitti, 332, 334, 336, 339. 
Toledo, Eleanora da, and her burial 

dress, 77. 

her portrait, 155. 

and the Spanish chapel, 308. 

Tornabuoni, Giovanni, and Ghir- 

landaio, 302. 

— Lorenzo, 303. 

— Lucrezia, wife of Piero de' 

Medici, 136. 
Torrigiano and Michelangelo's 

nose, 80. 
Trinita, S., church of, 321. 

Uberttni, 338. 

Uccello, Paolo, his picture of Sir 
John Hawkwood, 14. 

and Ghiberti, 46. 

at the Uffizi, 130. 

and Donatello, 130, 192. 



Uffizi, the, 109-62. 

its structure, 109. 

its collectors, 110-12. 

its portico statues, 112-3. 

best picture, 116. 

its autograph portraits, 151. 

Uzzano, Niccolo da, 57, 296. 

Vacca, II, 97. 
Vallombrosa, 245-9. 
Van Dyck at the Uffizi, 149, 150, 
155. 

at the Pitti, 334. 

Vasari on Giotto, 7. 

— on Brunelleschi, 10. 

— and Michelangelo, 21. 

— and S. Croce, 209, 211. 

— on Fra Angelico, 228, 257. 

— and his Castagno blunders, 255. 
Vecchio, Palazzo, the, and Michel- 
angelo's cartoon, 81. 

its history, 96-8, 103-8. 

and Savonarola, 263. 

Venetian pictures in the Uffizi, 121- 

4. 
Veronese, Paolo, 124, 336. 
Verrocchio, his Baptist relief, 34. 

— and S. Lorenzo, 73, 76. 

— his Cupid and dolphin, 103. 

— at the Bargello, 187, 195-7, 200. 

— his "David" considered, 187. 

— his "Bartolommeo Colleoni," 

196. 

— his life, 196. 

— his "Baptism," 239. 

— and Ghirlandaio, 301. 
Vespucci, Amerigo, 289. 
Victoria and Albert Museum, 205. 
Villa Landor, the, 349. 

— Karolath, 363. 

— Medici, 165. 

— Palmieri, 164. 

— Poggio del Gherardesco, 168. 
Villani, Giovanni, 36, 318. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, and the little 
birds, 48. 

his historical cartoon, 105. 

at the Uffizi, 128. 

his career, 128. 



390 



INDEX 



Vinci, Leonardo da, his doom, 129. 

his putative "Medusa," 158. 

and Verrocchio's "Baptism," 

239. 

his "Last Supper," 255. 

"Vita Nuova," the, 173. 

Vittorio Emmanuele, Piazza, 312-6. 



Warriors return to Florence, 316. 
Wordsworth and Dante, 5. 
— and Milton, 247. 



Zenobitts, S., his career 

miracles, 21, 22, 145. 
"Zuccone, II," 38. 



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IDERY INC. 



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N. MANCHESTER, T 5 

INDIANA 46962 I A V "^ 



